The Puppeteer's Little Gardeners
by freshlybakedspiderbread
Summary: As part of a favour to Yuuka Kazami, and for the sake of her own progress in her magical studies, Alice Margatroid begins a new project in which her dolls help reinvigorate a garden's health. A peaceful and soothing activity... up until it isn't.
1. Chapter 1

In the early morning, Alice Margatroid walked through the Human Village at a brisk pace. Though she didn't regularly visit the village often, the sights were still familiar and mostly unchanged from her previous visits. All manners of stores were lined up in the shopping district, with people moving in and out during the busy morning.

There might have been some new shops too that Alice hadn't seen before, featuring all kinds of different foods or cloths. However, Alice wasn't there that day for a leisurely stroll or to shop for the fun of it. She walked through the crowd and past the shops, sparing them nothing more than the occasional glance, as she headed to her destination.

The village's one and only flower shop came into view, where one could purchase a variety of potted plants or bags of seeds. Alice then took notice of the fact that compared to the busy streets and the flocks of villagers moving in and out of all the other establishments, that the area around the flower shop seemed particularly deserted. In fact, she almost thought it looked like people were going out of their way to avoid it. Hopefully, she thought, that didn't mean it was a substandard store or anything.

When she entered through the door of the modest flower store, she noticed that there were only two people inside other than herself. The florist behind the counter at the other end of the store, and her single customer at the moment, whom Alice recognised immediately. The green hair and the plaid clothes were impossible to mistake.

"-always perks me up when I see them!" The florist said cheerfully, in the midst of a lively conversation.

"I thought the same." Yuuka nodded, speaking in a breezy tone. "It'll be a gloomy summer if they ever stop blooming, but I'm sure there will be other places to enjoy flower viewings.

"That'd be a shame- ...Ah, welcome!" The florist finally noticed Alice and hailed her with a friendly greeting.

Yuuka likewise turned around and acknowledged Alice with a polite smile. "Oh, good morning. I don't think I've ever seen you here before."

"Hello." Alice courteously replied to the both of them with a nod. Now it made more sense to her why nobody else was currently in the shop, if it was currently being occupied by this particular youkai.

Alice was aware that Yuuka Kazami was someone who visited the Human Village regularly, often to the unease of any and all villagers whom she passed by. Yuuka often had that effect on some other youkai as well, so it was just a little surreal for Alice to see her making pleasant conversation with the human florist. At the very least, it didn't appear as if the florist was hiding any fear for Yuuka.

"Don't mind me, I just came to browse." Not entirely true, as Alice had a specific type of seed in mind, but with only two other people in the shop, she didn't want to interrupt whatever it was they were talking about at the moment.

Alice turned her attention to the shelves along the walls, displaying a large variety of bags filled with different types of flower seeds. She was pondering over the selection for no longer than half a minute, before she noticed Yuuka's presence having slid up next to her. Her gaze shifted enough just to see Yuuka out of the corner of her eye, who was looking curiously between her and the bags on display.

"Um..." It was hard for Alice to continue shopping while being stared at. "What is it?"

"I was just curious. Is there an occasion coming up where you need some flowers? Or are you looking to spruce up your drab household?"

"What do you mean drab-… No. I wanted to grow flowers to use as reagents for some experiments." Not wanting to look like she was dwelling in indecision, Alice scanned quickly for what she needed. She found and picked out a bag of daffodil seeds.

"Hmm…" Yuuka's lips briefly pursed in thought, which didn't go unnoticed by Alice.

"W-What?" Alice turned towards Yuuka. Nothing had been said, but she got the distinct feeling that she was somehow being criticised.

"I was just thinking to myself, is all." Yuuka said, still just standing beside Alice. "Do you do a lot of gardening, actually? I've never taken you for the type."

"You've seen a few pots around my house, haven't you? ...And wait, what 'type' have you taken me for, then?"

"Oh, nothing. That's just me thinking aloud." That's all the response Yuuka had to offer, to Alice's annoyance.

Now Alice really wanted to know what Yuuka meant. Was the bag of seed she picked out obviously wrong or something? "Well, you've still been staring at this bag I picked out, so I couldn't help but think you had something to say."

"Ah, I don't want to intrude too much. It's best to let others find their own way of things"

"It's just some seeds, I don't see how you could 'intrude' on what I'm doing too much."

"In that case, I do have a few questions about what you're going to do with those."

"Sure, ask away." Maybe Yuuka was just making polite conversation about flowers after all, Alice thought.

"I assume you are planning to grow those daffodils right away, in the patches near your house?"

"Yes. I recently allocated a space just for growing plants, actually."

"I see." Yuuka said, and simply continued staring.

"So then, was there anything else-"

"It's just that the season for planting bulbs has just passed by us. And I've seen the regular humidity around the forest you live in, so do you have a plan to offset that? How much irrigation sets in there anyhow? I thought it was mostly flat plains around the Forest of Magic. Not the most suitable for spring plants like daffodils or-"

"Uh-" Alice opened her mouth, but she didn't know what to say right away.

"And does the soil of this space you allocated run deeper than at least five times the depth of the average daffodil bulb? You could dig deeper still if not, but it would take time and you'd have to store the seeds in-"

"Uh…!"

Yuuka continued to say some more about… various things that Alice lost track of at some point. The most the magician actually knew about nurturing plants firsthand was watering daily and occasionally changing soil.

"I…" Alice eventually answered, just a tad overwhelmed. "I don't know. I hadn't looked into most of that. It's not like I'm trying to make the biggest flowers in the world or anything-"

"I see…" Something about the way Yuuka averted her gaze made Alice feel even more like she was being poorly-evaluated. It didn't help when Yuuka turned her head to the florist who was still sitting behind the counter. "That's a surefire way towards only half your seeds sprouting, isn't it?"

The florist shook her head and spoke resignedly. "There just aren't many green thumbs like us anymore."

"_Well, sorry…_" Alice mumbled, barely audible. She was suddenly reminded how in the past, that only half the things she tried growing tended to grow into full-fledged plants. Wasn't that already better than average for most casual gardeners, though?

"No need to apologise." Yuuka reassured, having heard Alice clearly. "I'm happy to provide any assistance to a fledgling gardener. Anything I can do to make sure all these fine seeds don't go to waste in your hands."

If Alice's expression and voice wasn't strained before, they were both definitely now creaking with her irritation.. "Thank you _very much_ for the advice, but I'll manage on my own."

"Are you sure you-" Yuuka began to ask, as Alice walked past her.

"I'm sure." This trip to the flower shop had already taken longer than Alice intended, and it being due to listening to Yuuka's condescension was not making up for time lost. She quickly purchased several bags of daffodil seeds before giving a polite goodbye to the florist, and only her.

Fortunately, Yuuka chose to stay behind in the store instead of continuing to press the point. As for Alice, she headed straight home to plant her seeds and to forget about this irritating encounter soon after.

* * *

Over a month later, Alice would return to that flower shop, the memory of her previous visit unfortunately fresh in her mind. At least this time, there were several human customers browsing the shelves and talking amongst themselves.

A few of the customers inside briefly glanced at Alice entering, but otherwise paid her no mind. It's wasn't as if there weren't villagers who didn't already know who Alice was, a youkai magician from the Forest of magic, but she was a regular enough appearance in the village that people were used to her presence.

"Oh, good morning!" The florist greeted Alice when she approached the counter. "Miss Margatroid, was it?"

"Good morning. You still remember me?" Alice greeted back with a smile.

"Of course, I don't have many customers that look like you, or who are friends of Miss Kazami."

"I don't know about that. We're more like acquaintances, really." Alice was tempted to elaborate on how they weren't quite like 'friends', before remembering why she had entered the shop. "I was hoping to get some help with my gardening."

"What kind of help do you need?"

"I've been having some trouble, concerning my daffodils? I used a lot of seeds and none of them have sprouted after all this time. I could use some advice. Maybe there is some method to make them grow properly that I wasn't aware of."

"Hmm, a lot of things could go wrong during the process, and a lot of pitfalls that beginners aren't aware of. Why don't you tell me exactly how you've been doing it?"

"Well, from the beginning…" Alice began to recount how she started out, with her having immediately heading home after purchasing her seeds to plant them.

When the sprouts took weeks longer than they otherwise should, Alice thought that perhaps they were just slow-budding seeds. More time passed, and it became clear that the plants were already drooping before they had even completely sprung up. She stubbornly continued to water and fertilise, hoping that good fortune would strike her and that the flowers would grow after all, but the end result was all the flowers seemingly stuck unbloomed. And that was only counting the seeds that had any visible growth, as opposed to others that never even produced a sprout.

"_Gah, isn't gardening supposed to be a soothing activity!?_" Alice had exclaimed at one time in pointless contempt, throwing her trowel on the ground. It hadn't done anything to make her feel better. It was just more stress onto an already growing pile of various small worries.

The only reason she was interested in daffodils in the first place, was because they were a required component in some of the spells she was currently experimenting with. She had foolishly thought producing some of her own in her own backyard would be convenient and simple, yet it just ended up being anything but.

When one form of productivity wasn't taking root, literally in this case, she retreated to another. Thus, during the times she grew too frustrated with her failed daffodils, she retreated to the workshop within her house to check on her other various projects. If she had to provide an honest answer to anybody who asked how her other projects were going though, she would have to answer 'poorly'.

The best way to describe it all was a slump, an extended slump in which she strayed from one flight of inspiration to the next, without managing to fully realise any of them. A dedicated magician such as herself never lacked for ambition, but when she looked around her workshop, she was reminded how difficult it was at times to translate that ambition into something productive.

Half-started or unfinished projects from the last year were placed as neatly as Alice could manage across the workshop, all of them deemed hopeless by her but left alone on the off-chance that she might suddenly find it in her to go back to them one day. When it came to balancing her own interest and the chances of success, one of the two factors always seemed to drop hard when she got some ways in.

Still, she wasn't quite ready to give up on the garden, and so here she was giving as many details about her gardening process as she could offer to the florist.

"-and even then, I come back and see that absolutely nothing has changed!"

Alice finished her recounting, unintentionally letting herself sound more overtly frustrated about it than she would have liked, but it was the first time in a while she had a chance to vent these specific feelings to anybody.

"...Ahem, right. It was rather distressing. I believe that's everything worth mentioning. Do you have any advice, for a novice in flowers?"

"I can always sympathise with anyone who wants to grow some lively plants. I'm sure all those buds in your garden can bloom still, with a little help! Though… Wouldn't it be easier if you asked Miss Kazami? You said you two were acquaintances, after all, and she knows a lot about-"

"I'd really rather hear from you." Alice insisted, the last thing she wanted right now was to have Yuuka telling her with a satisfied smile about how she needed the other's help after.

"Okay, because I do have some advice that can help."

"That's great to hear, so you know what I should do?" Alice's eyes lit up. There was hope for at least one thing to go right for her still remaining.

"Yes! ...In a sense. Maybe not from me, exactly…"

The florist gave a nervous chuckle, her words suddenly taking an awkward and hesitant tone, to Alice's confusion.

"I was asked to be more subtle about this, but I only know how to be honest. Do you remember how last time you were here, Miss Kazami asked if you'd need any help with your plants?"

"I do, yes…" Alice certainly remembered feeling condescended by Yuuka, which was why she felt embarrassed to come back to the flower shop in the first place, proving Yuuka right all along. "What of it?"

"I would have liked you to take advice directly from her, instead of what she actually asked me to tell you." The florist said before pulling out a piece of paper from under her counter. "She told me that she knew you'd probably come back eventually asking about your daffodils."

"You're joking." Alice gaped at the florist, but she could already tell this wasn't a joke.

"And so she wrote down all this advice about growing them that she wanted me to pass you, next time you came. I thought it was a bit presumptuous of her to assume that you would come to ask about this, but…"

"But she turned out to be completely correct, that I had no idea what I was doing." Alice couldn't help but grit her teeth as she said it.

It wasn't as if Alice thought that accepting advice or admitting to her shortcomings was beneath her, but a part of her had really wanted to prove to herself, and to Yuuka that she could manage the simple task of growing a few flowers on her own. It definitely had more to due with pettiness than anything else, but it still irritated her.

"...Show me." Alice said with a resigned sigh. "I'd be foolish not to at least take a look."

Alice took the note in her hand, skimming it for a moment before engaging the words more intently. It was exactly what the florist said it was, a variety of detailed advice written in a plain, dry prose.

There were few things on the note Alice had thought of already, but it covered a lot of potential solutions she never would have considered on her own, from replacing soil from other specific locations, to setting up artificial irrigation.

"So then…" The florist spoke up, snapping Alice out of her thoughts. "Do you think it'll help?"

"I can't say right now." Alice said in an impassive tone and pocketed the note. If she chose not to give a definitive answer for now, perhaps she could go a bit longer without admitting how much she owed Yuuka. "Not until I've tried any of it."

"Oh? Okay then." The response just seemed to confuse the florist, but she didn't linger on it and gave a cheerful smile. "I hope your garden blooms in full soon!"

"Thank you. I hope so too. ...By the way, how exactly do you know Yuuka?"

"Miss Kazami's a regular customer here, and one of my favourites, but don't let my other customers know! Although, 'regular' for her means she only comes in once every other month or so. Whenever she does come here, she always has something fascinating to share about flowers, like about their meanings and how to best take care of them. She knows about lots of plants I've never even seen too."

"Okay, but do you know that she's…?" Alice hesitated, second-guessing whether she should even say it if the other wasn't aware.

"She's… what?" The florist blinked at Alice, not following.

"You know, that she's-…" Alice made an awkward wave of her hands that didn't really convey anything. There was really no way to say 'infamous youkai that the other humans tended to avoid' without actually saying it. "I mean, you're not worried about her being around your store, even a little bit? Even though other people might be?"

"Worried? ...Oh! Oh no, I wouldn't worry about that at all. She's a model customer and always lively to talk to. That's all that matters to me, first and foremost."

"I see." It was a little surprising for Alice to hear, but it did make sense if this florist simply saw a side to Yuuka that none of the other villagers ever got a chance to.

"And besides, I'm sure I'm too plain for her tastes…" The florist said, waving her hand nonchalantly.

"Huh? If that's your only reason for thinking that, I think it's a bit of a naive one."

"Oh, that's very nice of you to say." The florist said with a lighthearted laugh.

"It is…?" Of course, that reaction just confused Alice.

"I'm certain that isn't her intention either way, but I'd root for her if she was looking for a cute girl among my other customers."

"...Wait." The gears within Alice's mind turned quickly as she finally started to process what the other woman was talking about. "Wait, hold on. I don't think we're having the same conversation-"

"Oh, I'm starting to feel bad, all this gossiping about Miss Kazami's love life! Don't tell her we talked about any of this, okay? You came here for help about your flowers, after all."

"Love li- No! I wasn't- You…" Alice bit her lip, deciding to accept the out for this conversation instead of lingering on it. "Yes. Let's just stop there."

Alice bought a pot from the shop, as thanks for taking up the florist's time, and headed back to her home in the Forest of Magic. She was still torn on whether she actually wanted Yuuka's advice to work or not. Regardless, she'd just see what happens.

* * *

Despite any pessimistic thoughts of hers, the buds in Alice's backyard were gaining height again, and one bud had even properly sprouted. Alice was kneeling low to the ground that afternoon, and stared at the tiny blue daffodil behind her house in awe. She was capable of all sorts of intricate magecraft, and could craft dolls of almost life-like detail, but she had just about given up on ever getting an actual flower to bloom.

It was a silly thing to get excited about, and she told herself as such at that moment, but she couldn't help but feel a flutter in her chest. She was so enamoured with the tiny sprout of life that she almost didn't notice the presence of someone walking over to her.

"It looks beautiful, the little thing. I can practically hear it celebrating it's new colours."

"Good afternoon." Alice turned her head to Yuuka. A part of her wanted to act curt still, but she was in too good a mood not to greet Yuuka with a smile. "Let me guess, you came here to check on my daffodils, and whether I took your advice?"

"Maybe? For all you know, I could have come here just because I wanted to see you." Yuuka stopped beside Alice's makeshift flower-bed, smiling back. "...But I'm also glad you took my words to heart. I did say something about wanting to make sure your seeds didn't go to waste, didn't I?"

"Yes, that you did. It was very aggravating, you know?" Alice stood up, stretching her limbs.

"I thought I was being perfectly polite. I visited that shop again last week, and I heard about how much stress your inexperience was causing you. Had I known how deep your ignorance went while you were acting so self-assured that time… I would have been much more earnest in making fun of you."

"You're just as pleasant ever, aren't you?" Alice rolled her eyes. Yuuka was the same as Alice had always known her, but she did owe the other some thanks. "Thank you all the same. Your advice really was helpful for a 'fledgling' like myself."

"I'm always happy to help flowers anywhere reach their full potential. Anyone could use a boost like that, right?"

"Right…" Alice wasn't sure if Yuuka was speaking about the flowers or about the magician now, and it was too embarrassing to ask for confirmation.

"...Even if you are just planning on mixing the flowers into your cauldron, or whatever it is you magicians do with plants."

"To be honest, I stopped thinking about that a while ago. I know I only started wanting to grow these to use as reagents, but at some point, I just really wanted to make them bloom so that my efforts wouldn't go to waste."

"Ah, so you've picked up the joy of watching flowers sprout from the work of your bare hands."

"Maybe! Well, not my 'bare' hands though." Alice's head tilted towards the doll that was currently floating beside her head, it's sleeves slightly dirty from exchanging the soil of the flower-bed earlier that day.

"Oh. So you had your dolls doing it all, huh…" Yuuka said in an impassive tone, clearly trying not to sound judgmental about it.

"Hey." Though Alice picked up on what Yuuka was implying rather easily. "Their work is my work too, which you should be aware of."

"I know, I know, they're an extension of yourself." Yuuka breezily reassured Alice with a wave of her hand. "I'm happy all the same you have little gardeners helping you. I'm a little envious too."

"You can make flowers bloom with your ability, can't you? I think that's probably more useful."

"I don't know about that…" Yuuka glanced aside again to Alice's daffodils, her voice carrying just a hint of melancholy. "It hasn't been much help lately."

Alice noticed the odd, almost somber tone in Yuuka's words. "What do you mean?"

"Hm… Since I've heard your flower-related woes, perhaps you would care to listen to some of mine?"

"You're having trouble with flowers? That's a surprise."

"It's a bit more general than that. One of my favourite places in this whole land, the Garden of the Sun, has been on a steady decline. Less and less sunflowers have been blooming as each summer passes, and I'm afraid the decline will only continue as the years pass."

"I had no idea." The last time Alice had been to the Garden of the Sun, it seemed as if the fields of sunflowers were literally endless, but if Yuuka was saying they were on a decline, she was inclined to believe that to be true. "But can't you use your ability? I thought you could make flowers bloom at will?"

"Goodness, no. I 'encourage' flowers with my ability, giving them a push to reach their full potential should they need it. I would never force a flower to bloom before it's ready. Not only is it unnatural, doing so would only cause harm to its life in the long-term."

"I think I understand." Alice crossed her arms, thinking to herself as she spoke. "...If that garden really is on decline, and you can't just snap your fingers to fix it, then the only solution is to plant more sunflowers. A lot of sunflowers, and making sure they mature to full bloom."

"That's asking a lot, isn't it? To watch over the entire garden for the season. I don't think I could-"

"You wouldn't have to. I think… I probably could. Well, not me exactly."

"What are you getting at?" Yuuka asked, intrigued.

"My dolls. They might be able to help the Garden of the Sun, by themselves."

"By themselves? They can't do anything without you telling them, can't they?"

"No, no. They might be able to. I did have this other project, that I put on hold."

"Now I'm really curious. Do elaborate."

"The method I move my dolls is through magic that lets me imprint my will onto them. So I had in mind this command spell, a 'script' of sorts that would make my dolls indefinitely follow a routine I made for them. Basically much more complicated set of instructions that would run indefinitely until I asked them to stop."

"I see…" Yuuka nodded, though Alice couldn't tell just by looking if Yuuka actually understood or not.

"Right, so refining it would require me to consistently check and update on the dolls performing the scripts while they were active, and I never found a good opportunity or span of time to do just that. ...Although-"

Looking at the daffodil buds ahead of her again, and then to the doll floating beside her, the thoughts began to run and then collide in Alice's mind. She continued to speak aloud, more just rambling to herself than actually talking to Yuuka now.

"If it was something like asking them to plant and take care of flowers in one place, I could periodically check on them while I do other things."

Just as Alice turned around, she nearly stumbled back when she saw Yuuka had moved silently right up next to her, her own eyes seemingly lit up. "Can you really do that? Have your dolls indefinitely plant seeds and grow flowers without stop?"

"W-Well, I would need to refine their procedures at times to make sure they're not making mistakes, but eventually I'd perfect it, so… potentially, yes."

"Intriguing. It sounds almost too good to be true."

"Like I said, it might not be perfect, and I'd have to check on them still on occasion." Alice said, putting a step's worth of distance between them. "But it might just be exactly the solution to that garden's problems. In fact..."

Alice thought about the potential of the idea more. If Alice were to assign a group of dolls to plant seeds across the entire Garden of the Sun, then have them watch over and nurture the garden presumably until the next blooming season occurred, it would bring the garden's health as a whole back up to a stable level.

All throughout that time, Alice would have to regularly make sure her command spell for her dolls were working smoothly, which meant not only maintaining the dolls but updating or ironing out any hiccups in the scripts. Though she described it in her mind as work, it all felt like a rather worthwhile project to pursue after all.

"...Hello? You got quiet all of a sudden." Yuuka asked, leaning in and tempted to poke Alice with the end of her parasol.

"...It could definitely work. The plan definitely needs more touching up, but letting them plant and nurture a field of that size would make for an excellent method of putting the script to practical use, while also observing their results."

"So does that mean you want to help Gensokyo's poor, declining sunflowers after all?"

"I do, yes." Alice responded with an optimistic smile. "If I do this right, it'll help me and it'll help mother nature too. I can't think of anything else more meaningful I could be doing right now."

Yuuka clasped her hands together in excitement. "If the field makes a turnaround because of you, I'll make sure everybody I know will hear about how you did a great service for the beauty of this land."

'_Isn't everybody you know only about five people?_' Alice thought to herself, but she was honestly just as excited. She may break her streak of incomplete projects just yet.


	2. Chapter 2

The skies were as clear as can be, and the sun shined a gentle and warm light across the vast fields of sunflowers. It would have been the perfect weather for a walk or even a picnic at the Garden of the Sun, but Alice wasn't there for any such recreation.

The magician was currently flanked by multiple identical and immaculately-dressed dolls. Half of them were part of her usual entourage who accompanied her at all times, and the other half were brought for that day's specific task. Upon spotting a suitable and bare patch of soil, she raised her hand upwards, and motioned her fingers for her dolls to act.

One doll was armed with a trowel as it flew over to the soil. Despite wielding a tool roughly the same size as itself, it dug a decently deep hole in the soil within less than a minute. It repeated this task over and over across the soil. At the same time, a second doll would move into the position that the previous doll held, dropping sunflower seeds from a bag one by one.

Alice watched them from a short distance, shifting focus between the two dolls as they moved. Her hands were raised to her chest level as her fingers meticulously moved the invisible strings that controlled her dolls. The strings were spiritual rather than physical, in the same way one's soul is connected to their body by 'strings'.

She had decades worth of mastery in multitasking, so it was barely any added effort when she sent forth a third doll with a watering can to provide moisture to each planted seed. Her eyes were sharply focused on every little movement.

The dolls moved with repeated motions and with mechanical efficiency, all thanks to Alice's own fastidious gestures and impeccable concentration. No matter how grand or how small the task, Alice took pride in always executing it with grace and efficiency. It was no different here, commanding her dolls to plant seeds along the soil. Sometimes when she got really into the motions of it, she allowed herself to twirl her wrists a little in-between the essential movements.

Even as Alice continued guiding her doll's actions, she still noticed things happening around her. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted her current company watching from nearby.

Yuukai briefly watched the dolls work with casual interest, before her attention turned to the patch of flowers she was standing next to. While Alice's dolls was planting new seeds, Yuuka figured she would give a little help to the sunflowers that were still growing.

Yuuka raised her hand, waving it over the flowers in an almost lethargic fashion as she used her ability. The fully-bloomed flowers proceeded to subtly turn their faces towards the direction of the sun, as if they heard Yuuka's gentle suggestion to help them grow. Meanwhile, a single bud that had yet to bloom started twitching, hesitantly deciding whether to open up or not. Yuuka looked over it with a languid smile, and drew a finger just barely over the bud, giving it the permission to bloom in that very instant.

Alice thought Yuuka appeared very relaxed even while tending to the garden she had claimed was facing a crisis. Yuuka moved so gingerly as she offered her power to the plants, without a hint of concentration on her face, that Alice might have believed she didn't have a care in the world.

It was then that Alice realised how engrossed she was with watching Yuuka. She would have lost track of her doll's movements if her own muscle memory wasn't as reliable as it was.

Yuuka had earlier explained all the steps and fine details one should consider when planting sunflowers, from the exact depth of the soil and distance between each seed, to the amount of water given with respect to the current humidity. Alice realised that the dolls had just about finished planting the seeds in the first square of empty soil. She had made sure to follow the specifications Yuuka recommended up to that point, so now was a good as time as any to try establishing the special spell she had prepared.

Alice dropped her strings, letting the dolls idle in place before she activated the built-in command spell she prepared for them, and watched them move on their own, completely automated.

The idea was simple enough. Just as manually controlling the dolls was Alice actively imparting her will on the inanimate puppets, this command spell would make it so that her will and desire, in this case Alice's intention to plant flowers, and keep that active inside the dolls even if Alice herself wasn't actively imparting that will on them. Within that spell were more layers she worked in that made it so the dolls would only cease their actions under certain conditions such as running out of soil, or instructions to change their directions should the weather change and so on.

Being able to fit in so many instructions, conditions and variables into a single spell that would essentially run itself would be very useful for any long term tasks without requiring Alice's full attention. The current ideal was that she'd only need to check in on the doll's progress on occasion to perform maintenance or replacements, at whatever pace she desired.

In the future, she might use it for sending her dolls out to collect materials from caves for her, or mining for gems around the forest, while she continued to focus on other matters at home.

That was thinking too far ahead though, Alice thought. For now, she was just going to focus on making sure that one-hundred percent of the garden's available soil were occupied with seeds, and that the plants across all the fields would be regularly nurtured by the dolls until the next blooming season.

This was a good time for Alice user her fresh, unused vertical notebook and pen. She pulled it out of her pockets, and began to write in-between observing her dolls, who were now acting without her active input.

_Log 1_

_The initial casting of the command spell is successful, and the dolls are planting seeds along the soil without any input from me whatsoever. To differentiate these dolls that I have assigned to this project, I shall refer to them as Gardeners._

_The Gardeners are keeping a steady pace, working slightly slower than if I were manually guiding them, but they are following all established specifications so far. _

Just as she wrote that down, she looked up to see that the watering can doll had bumped into the trowel-holding doll, and they were both trying to occupy the same space at the same time, interrupting each other's actions while the doll with the bag of seeds moved ahead of them.

Alice quickly made them all pause by reconnecting her strings to them with one flick of her wrist, taking this time to readjust the part of the command spell that related to positioning, timing, and making sure to clarify that dolls should wait for one another before proceeding with their next action. Once that was done, she set them loose again to observe the results, and pulled up her notebook again to slowly note down what happens in front of her.

_Five minutes after initial adjustment, and so far there is no more criss-crossing of roles between the Gardeners, nor do they interrupt each other even as one might pause or take a moment to move around an object in the way._

_The next factor to consider will be whether they will stop where the current script's iteration asks them to do so. If that proves successful, then I will move on to evaluating the script's adaptability in the case of any contingencies._

Alice smiled to herself upon writing the last sentence, and closed the notebook for now. It was a nice start, and not just to the project as a whole. Filling those first bit of written notes felt like a tangible promise to herself that more would be sure follow, eventually leading to a meaningful and insightful experience in the long-run.

"They look hard at work." Yuuka said in a pleasant tone, and it was only then that Alice had noticed Yuuka had moved right beside her, glancing towards the dolls. "You should let them know that I appreciate their efforts."

"Nobody appreciates them more than me, and also you should be directing _your_ appreciation at me." Alice replied in confidence. "At this rate, I think they'll cover about ten percent of the available plots of land before the end of the day, assuming nothing goes wrong. I'll continue looking out for any problems for the next hour or so."

"Rest assured, if something does go wrong when you're not here to see, like if those dolls were to start plucking out the flowers from the ground, I'll crush them on the spot and hold on to the pieces so you can go about rectifying it." Yuuka said, her pleasant tone never wavering.

"Well… it'd probably be easier for me to fix any problems if you leave them in tact for me to inspect." Alice replied with a nervous smile. Repairing or replacing dolls wasn't usually too difficult for her, but she'd rather avoid that if she could.

It might have been early for Alice to think it, but she had a very good feeling about her current project. Time would tell before she could be sure of the results, but she was looking forward to seeing her magical scripts play out in all the ways she intended, along with furthering perfecting them. Furthermore, if it helped maintain the beauty of this field of flowers, all the better.

"Wow! How cute!" A high-pitched voice exclaimed from above, snapping Alice out of her thoughts.

Flying overhead were a group of fairies, who all descended to get a better look at the gardener dolls. Fairies were a typical sight around this garden, as they typically liked to play among the fields. She even recognised several of them as regular sights around the Forest of Magic as well.

If she recalled, the fairies were Sunny Milk, Star Sapphire, and Luna Child. They were further accompanied by a fairy she didn't recognise. This fourth fairy, Alice thought, was more interesting in appearance than most with features that were reminiscent of an entire butterfly's life cycle. A larvae's stalk on her head, her body covered in leaves like a pupa, and large swallowtail wings on her back.

Eternity Larva merrily approached the dolls still at work and was either speaking to them, or she was speaking her own thoughts aloud. "How do they carry all those toys with those little hands?"

"Is it that big a deal? My hands are small too, and I bet I could carry those." Sunny Milk said in turn, and outstretched a hand to curiously touch the dolls.

"Hey, hold it right there, all of you." Alice called out and quickly walked up to the fairies. By the time they turned to her though, Sunny Milk had already grabbed one of the dolls and was holding it by the waist. "Ah, darn it…"

Alice had just adjusted the dolls' commands so they would wait for each other, and with one of them stopped, the others simply froze in place. She had not taken into consideration fairies coming in to bother them until this moment. Just another factor she had to work around, she concluded.

"Those dolls are in the middle of an important activity. Please don't touch them. Or go to close to them. Or do anything around them-"

"Why did they all stop moving?" Luna Child asked aloud, poking at one of the dolls floating listlessly in the air.

"They look funny, holding those big toys." Star Sapphire commented as she peered between two of them.

"I think they're cute!" Sunny Milk said, waving the doll at Alice. "Could I trade you my rocks for this one?

It was then that Alice remembered that trying to reason with fairies of all beings was a herculean task in of itself, and even if she did somehow manage it, there was no guarantee that anything she said with stick with them for longer than a week, at best.

Yuuka stepped forward, addressing the fairies. "Excuse me. Those little gardeners are actually doing a favour for me, and helping to revitalise the sunflowers around here. They're very dedicated, so they won't be interested in playing with you or anybody else. If you could pass that knowledge onto all of your other fairy friends, I'd appreciate that."

Larva nodded in apparent understanding, and she had a look of awe on her face as she took in this information. "I thought they were just really small fairies playing a game, but they're actually dedicated gardeners? That's much more interesting... I really want to get to know them better!"

"Yeah, well…" Sunny on the other hand, didn't seem too convinced. "If these little things only know how to grow flowers, I'm wondering if they can make our base prettier too!"

"Oh, I was thinking the same thing." Luna agreed, playing with a doll's arms.

"I was actually thinking if we could teach them to do other things, like planting bombs…" Star nonchalantly said, while delicately gripping one doll by the head.

"Yes, well, I'm sorry to say that's not an option." Alice stated bluntly to the fairies. "If you bunch could let go of them and leave, so I could-"

"I don't think so! You all know what comes next, right?" Sunny exclaimed to her companions.

"Yeah!" Luna and Star exclaimed in turn, and before Alice could question this, the three of them literally vanished in the next moment.

"Aw, I never like it when they do that." Larva said, pouting.

"Oh, for-." Alice's eyes widened at that, the three fairies having completely disappeared without a trace right in front of her. "Where did they-"

Not a moment later, Yuuka took one step to her right and then swung her parasol hard in a horizontal arc, in a seemingly random direction.

The three fairies that had vanished reappeared again, all falling over to the ground after having been smacked aside by Yuuka. All three were groaning in pain from the unexpected attack.

"Oh. ...Thank you, Yuuka." Alice nodded in gratitude to Yuuka.

"Wow!" Larva only seemed impressed by this. "They always beat me in hide-and-seek! How did you do that?"

"The flowers let me know where they were." Yuuka explained, which only drew a confused tile of the head from Larva. She then approached the three fallen fairies, who all in turn nervously looked up at her looming over them, and addressed them in a low voice. "Now, how about I make myself _clearer_ this time?"

* * *

Yuuka dusted off her hands, satisfied with a job well-done. "I hope this lesson stays in your mind for a while."

"Yuuka, I think they got the gist of it." Alice said with an apprehensive grin, though she couldn't deny she was a little satisfied too.

As a punishment for the three fairies trying to disrupt the little gardeners and by extension the garden as a whole, Yuuka had decided they would make up for it by acting as fertiliser. As such, the three of them were currently all buried in the soil save for their heads sticking out.

"Wargh…" The biggest retort any of them could muster was a pitiful whine.

Yuuka then turned to Larva, who had been watching her friends be buried alive with only slight interest. "Sorry, Miss Eternity. I don't think your friends will be available for the rest of the day."

"They do look pretty stuck…I'll just head back to the forest. I'll tell any other fairies I know not to bother any of these tiny things in the garden." Larva shrugged her arms, before directing a friendly smile to the dolls, which had returned to their routine off to the side. "But I'm still going to be friends with you all some other day, you can count on it!"

Larva then flew off, and Alice sighed as she did so. "That's as good as saying that you _are_ going to bother them! I'll have to make it so the dolls can handle any fairy-related troubles on their own then..."

"Well, at least today's been a learning experience for you?" Yuuka tried to reassure. "Much like it's been one for these fairies."

"...Do you do this often, by the way? I mean, this can't possibly be the first time that fairies have caused trouble with your precious flowers."

"It's simply in fairies' nature to follow their whims, and forget their troubles as soon as possible. I don't begrudge them for it anymore than I do the clouds for raining when I'm without my parasol. Of course, that doesn't mean I would teach them a lesson if I think I can help them learn something new, whether by giving them advice, or…"

"Or by putting them into the ground, apparently. And what if they just forget whatever you try to teach them? From my experience, even if you punish them thoroughly, they don't take long to forget everything and just cause the same trouble again.""

"Then I'd just teach them again. You don't stop washing your clothes just because they will get dirty again, nor do you stop watering a flower even if it might stop growing someday, right?"

"I suppose… that makes sense." The thought of having to deal with fairies has always been annoying to Alice, but if she viewed it as simply regularly dealing with one of nature's quirks… Well, it was still annoying, but something not worth getting upset about.

"That said, I'm sure the impression I've left on these three today may just stay with them for a long time."

"I don't think anybody will forget a punishment like that…" She glanced briefly to the fairies again, feeling just a little bad for them, but only a little. "Today has definitely been educational. I think I know what I need to do next."

"I can't feel my wings…" Sunny whined from off to the side, to the acknowledgement of nobody.

* * *

Just a few days later, Alice was once again standing in the middle of the large sunflower fields, and already the process of observing her dolls at work while taking notes was becoming a routine she was getting used to.

The dolls had covered what Alice estimated to be fifteen percent of the unoccupied soil across the garden so far. As this first 'wave' of gardeners continued to plant seeds, Alice was already planning on assigning a second group of dolls to water and fertilise the already growing plants.

For all the thinking she was doing towards productivity though, she did admit that having an excuse to go out and simply bask in the fragrance and scenery of the Garden of the Sun. She admittedly didn't even often really went out to enjoy the scenery of the forest she lived in either. It was a nice change of pace so far.

As Alice stretched her arms over her head, she heard a familiar voice called out. "Alice! Hey there...!"

"Hm?" Allice turned towards the voice, and waved in greeting. "Oh, Narumi! So you came after all."

"I hope you weren't in doubt! I said I was going to come to take a look at this project of yours, didn't I?" Narumi had a fake pout for all of a second before greeting back with a friendly smile.

Alice's fellow magician from the Forest of Magic, Narumi Yatadera, was an introverted type not unlike Alice herself. If someone wanted to be less generous, they would call Narumi a 'shut-in'. The two of them did still run into each other on occasion, where they would make small-talk or discuss matters of magical studies.

Alice had mentioned the other day about her current project, the automated dolls assigned to help replenish the garden, and Narumi had expressed curiosity and interest in seeing for herself.

"So is that them?" Narumi said, turning her eyes to the dolls ahead of them, currently moving in sync as they took turns troweling, planting, watering and so on. "You're not doing anything to control them right now?"

"My hands are completely free." Alice even raised her open hands for good measure. "And they'll keep at that all day and night on their own."

"Very neat! It's really cute too, and even whimsical, you know? Knowing these tiny, wooden girls are working hard to keep the flowers healthy. I think they're definitely more charming than the fairies that often show up around here, at least."

"It does sound like something out of a children's story, doesn't it?" Alice smiled at the thought as she glanced towards the dolls as well. No matter how many years passed, she never stopped appreciating the aesthetics, craft and charm that gave her dolls their trademark look.

"Though, if this garden really is facing some kind of crisis, maybe you could have come to me for help too."

"You mean with your life-magic?" Alice was aware that Narumi's speciality magic over life-force was often used to help the latter's crops grow. She thought that in hindsight, perhaps she should have went to Narumi for help regarding her daffodils. "Would you be able to boost the entire field's growth back to good health?"

"Well, not the entire field, of course. I just meant more like adding a coat of magic to bolster the flower's growth here and there."

"Hmm… That'd be very nice of you, but to make any long-term difference, you'd have to keep coming back regularly and transverse the entire garden to apply your magic every time. Surely you'd rather rely on a more hands-off approach?"

"When you put it like that… I suppose I'd just be troubling myself for no reason if your dolls are perfectly capable of saving the garden by themselves." Narumi shrugs, and looks to the sunflowers all around them. "Is this place really in bad health? It still looks like there flowers go on forever."

"Yuuka said that makes it easier to take their beauty for granted, and I'm inclined to agree. It would be a shame if all this scenery disappeared sooner than it has to."

"Sounds like the garden is in good hands with you watching over it." Narumi nods in agreement. "Maybe I'll try doing my part too, helping the flowers a little if I ever feel like coming here for a walk."

"I'm sure the flowers would appreciate that."

"Oh, so you speak their language now?" Narumi let out a small laugh at that.

"Ah, no, I just… I've been hearing that from Yuuka a lot. I suppose it's rubbing off on me."

"It also sounds to me like a flowery way for her to say that she appreciates what you're doing."

"No, I'm pretty sure she was being literal." It was admittedly a fact that Alice didn't actively think about too often, because the thought of all the flowers around her evaluating her performance was like something out of a bad dream born of stress.

At that moment, a different voice suddenly called out, but from above, high in the sky. "There you all are!"

Flying overhead was Eternity Larva, once again descending down near the dolls. "I did say I would be back! I never did get to play with you all last time I was here."

"Play? Is that what you called what happened to your friends last time?" Alice commented dryly. If Larva heard her, she didn't show it.

Larva moved closer to the dolls still, a hand outstretched to touch them. Narumi was expecting Alice to be concerned about this, but Alice was simply smiling expectantly.

Just before Larva made physical contact with one of the dolls, two of them quickly flew right in front of the fairy, drawing tiny lances in their hands and pointing the tips menacingly at her.

"Woah! What's the big deal...?" Larva blinked in surprise at the intimidating stance, the tips of the small lances looking like they might hurt. "I was just going to-"

The dolls then continued to advance on Larva, poking their lances at her and wordlessly insisting that she backs off. Larva yelped as she got a few pricks from them before finally putting some distance between herself and the dolls. The dolls didn't follow Larva, though they still kept their defensive stance just in case.

"What a bunch of rude little things! Hey, did you see that?" Larva turned to Alice and Narumi, neither of whom's presence she had acknowledged until that moment. "I've never met fairies so unfriendly before."

"I thought I already explained that they're not fairies, and they're only acting how they're supposed to." Alice explained proudly. "Defending themselves from foreign entities seeking to disrupt their routine, this is also one of their included instructions, and I'm happy to see right away that it is working just fine."

"Hmm… I didn't understand any of that." Larva said without any hesitation.

"It means they're too dedicated to their work to play with you. You'd have to try a lot harder."

"Um." Narumi glanced aside to Alice. "Is it a good idea to encourage her?"

"Oh, I'm not worried." Alice replied in confidence.

"Okay… I guess if they're focused on planting flowers, they can't be all bad. ...However!" Larva pouted for a moment, before stomping her foot on the ground. "I'm still ticked off! So before I go…"

Larva then took flight. She hovered above where the dolls were, and announced herself to them.

"I hope all of you feel itchy all day!" She declared, before outstretching both her arms towards the group of dolls, firing out a mass amount of her scales at the dolls.

The dolls, having no sense of touch, naturally did not even flinch upon being sprayed with the scales. The ones acting as 'sentry' to the gardeners just tilted their heads up at Larva, and designated her as still being a threat. They drew their lances once again and flew up towards the fairy.

"Eep!" Immediately losing her nerve from before, Larva turned around and fled as small projectiles of magical energy fired out from the dolls. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean it…!"

Once the fairy flew out of sight, Narumi couldn't help but chuckle at the demonstration she just witnessed. "I'm glad to see your dolls don't have to worry about fairies then."

"Thank you." Alice said with a satisfied smile. "...I might feel just a little bad though. You don't think their response was a bit extreme for a fairy?"

"Fairies aren't eligible for Buddha's salvation anyway, and they recover quickly, so I'd say you should be as harsh on them as you like."

"Wow, I don't know if my dolls will still look 'whimsical' if they took your advice!"

Alice and Narumi exchanged a laugh, and would continue to make small-talk while observing the gardener dolls.

...Unbeknownst to either of them, someone was stealthily watching from afar, while hiding behind a thick foliage of sunflower stalks.

It was a youkai who was quite displeased at the sight of fellow dolls performing labour in this fashion. Before anyone could have noticed her presence, she slinks away, her head full of plans towards emancipation.


	3. Chapter 3

After a week or so, Alice had already gotten accustomed to the new routine she had set up for herself. Every day would have a few hours allocated spent in the garden to observe or make slight adjustments to the dolls' patterns if need be.

That morning, she was currently on her way to the part of the garden where the dolls would have been currently working. As she walked, she pulled out her notebook and checked her log of the previous day for any reminders to herself.

_Log 30_

_The Gardeners have assured that at least forty percent of the unoccupied plots of soil have seeds buried in them. There was a slight issue with aligning their movements as they progressed up a steep hill, but it was an easy fix to the script to compensate. Should keep watch for any other similar inclines though._

_I have deployed a second wave of Gardener dolls to spend each day providing water to the seedlings, and any other dryer patches of soil they come across. It took a few attempts before they could properly differentiate between what soil was damp or dry, but they appear to operate properly at the moment._

Alice closed the notebook, content with her progress so far. Now with at least a dozen dolls working in the garden, and at two different areas at any given time, her daily observations would be a little more involved, but it also meant she was closer to perfectly refining the whole process.

With that all in mind, Alice walked to the spot where her dolls should be exchanging soils that day. It didn't take long before she noticed one group of five dolls, hard at work at keeping the growing seeds healthy...

"...Huh?" Alice scanned the immediate area, but no matter where she turned or where she looked, she only counted five dolls instead of the six there should have been.

Several immediate explanations crossed Alice's mind, such as the missing doll having fallen inert due to the spell's effect weakening, or having gotten stuck in its loop and falling behind the other dolls. Or worse, it might have been snatched away by a fairy that managed to get close… or Yuuka noticed something wrong and deemed it fit to be destroyed.

Whatever the reason, Alice just hoped it was still nearby and more importantly, intact. At least if it was still around, it wasn't likely to cause too much trouble for anything or anyone.

* * *

"Okay... Let's start from the top again." A troubled Medicine said with an irritated tone. She always knew liberating dolls would be hard and tedious work, but her patience was slowly starting to wear thin.

The doll youkai, Medicine Melancholy, was squatting low to the ground, facing the decidedly non-youkai doll she had 'rescued'. Said doll was floating in place above the ground, its trowel laid out in front of it. After a second or so, it reached for the trowel and picked it up, with the intent of digging into the dirt some more.

"Stop that." Medicine plucked the trowel from the doll's hand, just like the previous four times she had done so over the course of this extended conversation. "You don't need to do any of that anymore. You're free now!"

No matter how much Medicine pointed dramatically to the great blue sky, the doll simply stayed in place, circling and hovering a short distance around the patch of dirt that Medicine had interrupted it from digging up.

"If my speech about dollkind's potential didn't get to you, I don't know what else will…" Medicine sighed to herself.

The tiny doll before her was stubborn, insisting on continuing this menial garden-work, which contradicted the lack of any kind of drive in its eyes or movements. Looking into those joyless eyes was how Medicine knew this doll was surely being forced to work against her will! She just needed to convince her that it was okay to stop, and once she figured out how, she could do the same for those other dolls it was accompanied with.

"You can move just like I do, but you're not used to having your own thoughts, are you?" She asked nonchalantly, her hand fidgeting with the trowel's handle. "I actually don't think I'm used to having my own thoughts either, even though I've been at this for so long. So don't feel bad, okay?"

The doll doesn't provide any kind of response, leading Medicine to start wondering if they even spoke the same language. Before she could further inquire about this, she hears the nearby footsteps of someone approaching.

"So that's where she was." Alice said, relieved at finding the missing doll, before turning to Medicine. "Oh, aren't you-...?"

"Ah, the enemy!" Medicine announced, pointing dramatically at Alice.

"Wha-" Alice briefly looked over her shoulder, on the off chance that Medicine was referring to someone else behind her. "What do you mean 'enemy'?"

"You're the one forcing all those dolls into hard labour, that makes you my enemy! Look at this poor girl, can't even think of doing anything else other than digging holes!" Medicine gestured appallingly to the doll, who was still just hovering in circles. "Your intentions are like poison to her!"

"...I think I see what's going on here. You're Medicine, right?" Alice recalled having met this youkai exactly once, but she had left quite an impression what with her talk of 'doll liberation'. "I don't know if you remember me, but I make my dolls move with a spell-"

"I know who you are, and you can't trick me! These dolls are moving on their own, no strings attached."

"It's more complex than that…"

"To think, I'd come across dolls that were just like me! I'm going to show them all the things the world has for them! Like eating candy, or playing in the fields, or having tea-parties with me, or-"

As Medicine kept going, Alice was wondering how she was going to explain the intricacies of the spell she was using in a way that might convince Medicine. Her little gardener's 'script' had already been disrupted, and Alice was eager to get it back to proper routine as soon as possible.

"-and when I tell them about my day, they'll do my hair and… Hey! Are you listening?"

"Yes." She lied, nodding her head in sympathy. "And I'm sorry, but none of that applies to this situation. How did you even separate that doll from the others? They're supposed to fend off any threats."

"I'm not a threat! I tried telling them that too, but they kept trying to poke at me with their needles. So I grabbed the closest one and ran until they stopped chasing me."

Alice made a mental not to herself to rectify that in the doll's scripts. If the dolls would just go back to their routine before making sure they were all together again, then another condition would have to be written to fix that.

"Anyhow, this one has stopped trying to hit me, which means I'm well on my way to convincing her to follow my lead."

"That doll isn't different from any of my others. Look, let me show you." Alice raised her hand, about to connect her magical strings with the doll to manually make it bow or something, whatever would convince Medicine.

Medicine however, gasped in terror at this display, and quickly grabbed the doll, pulling it close to her chest. "You're going to try and take away this doll's independence, aren't you?!"

"That's not it! ...I mean, I suppose technically..." Alice started to speak, but she lost her train of thought when she noticed something odd about Medicine.

A deep, purple glow was emitting from Medicine's feet, to the grass and beginning to spread to the soil and even to some nearby flowers. Alice knew enough about Medicine's powers to recognise this as the youkai releasing a miasma of poison unintentionally in her tense state.

"H-Hey, stop that! Look, you're going to poison the-"

"You can't put her back on strings! I absolutely won't allow it!" Medicine hugged the doll tighter as she turned around, and immediately fled deeper into the sunflower fields. "We're free forever…!"

"Wait, stop!" Alice called out, but Medicine ignored her, leaving a distinctive trail of lingering miasma as she fled, which made Alice's worries increase tenfold.

If Medicine continued to spread her poison all throughout the fields, she might actually kill the majority of the sunflowers in the garden. That would already be a tragic loss of nature in of itself, but Alice was admittedly a little more concerned with Yuuka putting the blame on her, and then turning Alice into fertiliser to make up for it…

"Stop…!" Alice shouted as she flew after Medicine through the fields. "You're poisoning the fields!"

"We won't take orders from you!" Medicine shouted back, weaving past stalks just fast enough to stay ahead of Alice the entire time.

"Ugh, fine. Be that way!" As Alice chased down Medicine, she spread her arms to her sides, sending out her personal entourage of dolls ahead.

The dolls were sent to speed ahead of her and in front of Medicine to cut her off. Alice's classic formation, 'The Little Legion' would be sufficient to stop Medicine in her tracks.

...Or at least, that's what Alice thought before Medicine grazed right past the doll's attacks, dodging right past them.

"Unliberated dolls are far too slow!" Medicine apparently wasn't lacking the focus to mock Alice before continuing to move deeper into the fields.

It was a bit disheartening to see her classic technique be so easily overcome, but Alice soon found bigger things to worry about. The trail of miasma continued to linger behind Medicine, and if they continued flying through the garden at this rate, it was going to be a death sentence for the sunflowers.

"I said stop…!" More out of panic than from actually considering her options, Alice quickly shot out her two gunpowder-loaded dolls out at Medicine. They were too heavy to get ahead of Medicine, but they got close as possible before Alice hastily ordered them to detonate.

Normally, a lot more care and scrutiny goes into when Alice decides to blow up even one of her own dolls, but the urgency of the situation meant Alice did not care if she ended up flying right into her own explosions, which was exactly what happened before she and Medicine went crashing into the ground, both of them somewhat bruised and charred.

"Oof…" Alice and Medicine both groaned as they slowly picked themselves off the ground.

"Are you some kind of lunatic?!" Medicine exclaimed, brushing ash off her skirt. "You could have set the sunflowers on fire with that stunt!"

"You're talking to _me_ about- No, nevermind that." Alice rubbed her sore back before trying to take a more cautious tone as she continued to speak. "Medicine, please listen to me. I made those dolls move on their own with my magic. A different kind of spell from my usual strings, but they're not less alive than the rest of my dolls. They're not like you at all."

"...Yeah, I've noticed." Medicine admittedly quietly as she gazed down at the doll in her arms.

"Huh? You did?"

"This girl doesn't just lack joy in her eyes, she doesn't have anything in them. Even after being chased or nearly blown up a moment ago…" Medicine let out a deep sigh, before releasing the doll from her grip and allowing it to float away. "...I really thought I had finally found others just like me."

Now that the adrenaline and tension in her body was fading, Alice was now feeling proper sympathy for Medicine. She let out a sigh of her own, before speaking. "I'm sorry you were misinformed. I feel responsible for this too."

"...It doesn't matter." Medicine said softly, looking up at Alice, feeling a tad bit remorseful herself. "You were just helping plant new flowers, weren't you? Miss Yuuka told me about how the garden hasn't been blooming as many lately. I bet you're here to help fix that, aren't you?"

"Yes, that's right. Although... the dolls were one thing, but I was more worried about all that poison you were spreading just now."

"Oh? You mean that miasma… Sometimes the poison from the lilies I live near sticks to me, and then it comes off me when I get stressed, but it won't hurt the plants here."

"I-It won't? Really?"

"Of course it won't." Medicine explained as if it were obvious. "I might not be able to help when it comes off me, but I'd make sure the poison that lingers from the lilies isn't anything that would be toxic to sunflowers."

"You can just do that?"

"Manipulating poison is easy for me, and of course I'd do it if I'm going to walk into a whole field of sunflowers. Isn't that just common sense?"

"Is that so… I guess I blew us up for nothing, huh?" Alice gave an awkward laugh, though she only felt even more ridiculous about her actions when Medicine didn't laugh and just stared at her like she was strange.

"...I am sorry for getting in your way, though. I want this nice garden to stay healthy too. Sunflowers aren't as nice as lilies-of-the-valleys, but…" She turned to the tiny gardener she had attempted to 'rescue' and gave a wistful smile. "Those dolls wouldn't serve any purpose being there."

"Well, no, I couldn't let you take them with you regardless." Alice looked between the doll and Medicine. "...But if you were interested in still visiting them now and then, I could probably make it so they take make an exception to you, meaning you could even get close without them becoming hostile."

"Really…?" Medicine blinked in surprise. "You would do that?"

"I trust you more than any of those troublemaking fairies, and I feel like… my dolls would appreciate that too."

"You really believe that?"

"It's a nice thought at least, isn't it?"

"I…" A small, appreciative smile formed along Medicine's features, which she didn't spend long trying to hide. "I'll be sure to come see them often, so your efforts don't go to waste."

"I'm sure my tiny gardeners would like that." Alice said, smiling right back.

* * *

Medicine and Alice exchanged goodbyes, before Alice finally returned to her original task for the day. She rounded up the dolls and readjusted their scripts to make up for the day's disruptions, and by late afternoon, she was now simply watching them to make sure they were properly back to work.

The scuffle with Medicine had made Alice forget if she had any specific plans for updating or testing the dolls and their command spell, but she was content to simply observe for a little while longer, in order to wind down from the earlier excitement.

As she observed, engrossed with the dolls moving from one patch of soil to the next, she felt the arrival of someone coming up beside her, and turned her head to greet her. "Oh, good afternoon. I haven't seen you in a few days."

Yuuka gave a small wave as a greeting, before standing next to Alice and turning her gaze to the dolls as well. "There are other flower-beds thriving during this season, but I still want to check up on things here. I did ask you do this for me and all."

"Well, you needn't worry. I believe the dolls will have planted seeds in half of all the available soil by tomorrow. I've gotten rather confident at fixing any issues that might pop up."

"Really, any issues at all?" Yuuka asked in a coy tone. "Even ones that require you asking your dolls to blow themselves up?"

"I… W-What?" Alice turned her head to Yuuka, then did a double take after taking a moment to make sure she heard that right. "How do you- Did Medicine tell you?"

"Oh, I haven't seen her today. The flowers told me, actually." Yuuka casually explained, without even turning to look at Alice "Miss Melancholy likes to visit sometimes, and the flowers are familiar with her. Your chase and ensuing explosion is quite the eventful incident among their peaceful days. It's like they were eager to tell me about it."

"Then, how exactly did the flowers… phrase it?" Alice asked, almost afraid of the answer.

"The gist of it was that you were doing your best to protect the garden." Yuuka turned to Alice, tilting her head at the magician. "Is that wrong?"

"I... suppose?" Alice shrugged her shoulders. She admittedly still felt embarrassed about some of her actions regarding Medicine earlier, but if the flowers themselves, according to Yuuka anyway, saw it in a positive light, then she wouldn't argue it.

"I appreciate it, but you need not try and scare away my neighbours, you know?" Yuuka said with a small, amused smile. "The lengths you're willing to go for the flowers are admirable, though."

"That's nice of you to say, but..." Alice turned away, wearing a self-deprecating grin at herself. "There wasn't anything so admirable behind it. I was only thinking about you at the time."

There was a pause in the air, which didn't go unnoticed by Alice. She curiously turned her head to Yuuka, who was looking back at her just as perplexed, as if she didn't quite understand. It was then that Alice figure she should clarify her words.

"What? Don't look at me like that." Alice couldn't help but chuckle at the reaction she got. Was what she said so strange? "I just thought you'd take it out on me if anything happened to your precious flowers."

"...Well, of course." Yuuka just grinned back at Alice. "I'm putting my faith in you, after all. I don't believe you'll let me down, right?"

"Yes, yes. You can count on me..." Alice said half-heartedly, but she did find herself believing in what she was saying. Even if Yuuka was just teasing, hearing it reinstated Alice's confidence that this garden was going to turn out just fine under the care of her dolls.


	4. Chapter 4

With the remaining days of spring soon to be left behind to make way for summer, it only got warmer as time passed in the Garden of the Sun. The last few days of spring continued to be consistently pleasant, as was today when Yuuka took a stroll through the garden. Though these days, she visited more so to gauge the field's overall health and to maybe to see how those dolls of Alice's were doing.

Yuuka brushed her fingers against the petals of the nearest sunflower, and just like the rest of them, it spoke to Yuuka about how lovely the warmth of the sun's rays felt. Yuuka could only guess what that was like, as the sunlight was shining down on her parasol. A pleasantly warm feeling enveloped her, and she liked to think that she had a shared understanding with the sunflowers at that moment.

Yuuka walked deeper into the garden, where she caught a glimpse of those hard-working dolls, which had become a typical sight at this point, though that didn't take away from their charm. There were now multiple groups of dolls that worked across the garden at any given time. Watching the cute wooden automatons with their fine dresses and tiny hairstyles, moving expertly to take care of the plants, Yuuka thought that it could have been considered yet another delightful quirk of nature in of itself, much like the fairies that often played in the garden.

On the subject of fairies, a familiar one flew into view at that moment, fluttering in the air. Larva was deep in thought about how to approach the dolls below her. The fairy never gave up trying to 'befriend' the little gardeners, their appearance and methodical movements fascinated her too much for her to leave alone. Even after it was explained to her multiple times that they weren't actual living beings, she either didn't listen or forgot everytime. Before Larva made any sort of decision though, Yuuka decided to call out to her.

"Miss Eternity, good afternoon." Yuuka hailed the fairy, waving for her attention.

"Oh!" Larva immediately shifted her attention from the dolls, to flying towards Yuuka and greeting her. "Good afternoon to you! I was just about to greet those gardeners again."

"Yes, I noticed that. Didn't they end up driving you away the last time you approached them?" And also every time before that too. Larva might have been up to at least eight failed attempts by now, but Yuuka wasn't keeping count.

"Yeah, they did… I was sad that they didn't like the acorns I brought them." Larva shrugged, figuring that not everybody could appreciate quality acorns.

"I remember that. I think they just got mad when you dropped those on their head, and probably thought you were attacking them."

"You think so? They must not be very smart! Oh, I shouldn't laugh…" Larva said, unable to help but to laugh anyway at how scatterbrained those tiny gardeners must be for managing to misinterpret something so obvious.

"They're busy as always though, so if you were thinking of approaching them again, I really don't recommend it." Yuuka suggested, though she admittedly wasn't expecting her words to have much effect here.

Indeed, Larva wasn't persuaded and shook her head determinedly. "That's no good at all! Butterflies aren't known for giving up, you know?"

"I didn't know. Did you make that up?"

"It's true, and I'm going to prove it! I'm going to make friends with them right now!" Larva announced proudly before flying over to the dolls.

Yuuka, having seen this song and dance quite a few times already, decided to instead focus her attention on a nearby patch of sunflowers, surveying their growth so far. It didn't take long before she heard the panicked yelps of Larva and the sounds of magical projectiles flying.

"Why you! Take this!" Larva exclaimed, before firing off her scales at the dolls, who just like the previous several times this happened, did not even flinch before continuing to chase the fairy away. "Aaaah! I'm sorry…!"

Yuuka just smiled to herself the whole time. Fairies couldn't help but to follow their natures like that, after all.

After Larva had flown off, the dolls simply resumed their work, not caring at all that they were now covered in butterfly fairy scales once again. Most of the scales would eventually fall off them and onto the soil anyhow, so it didn't leave a visible trace on the dolls for too long.

It was only a short time later, when a second guest would arrive to where Yuuka and the dolls were, flying on a broomstick and landing nearby before announcing herself loudly.

"Wow, that fairy was off in a hurry. Looked like she was scared out of her wits too. You had anything to do with that?" Marisa asked, half-jokingly, though she wouldn't put it past Yuuka to send some poor fairy running away crying.

"I did nothing of the sort." Yuuka responded cheerfully to the magician. "If I wanted to tease some fairies, I'd have gone to Misty Lake today. They're much more active there during this weather, and more easily confused in their relaxed states."

"I'll keep that in mind." Marisa snickered at that. Some of things Yuuka tended to say could be their own kind of quirky at times, even if a little intense.

"What brings you here today, by the way?" For as long as Yuuka knew Marisa Kirisame, the human witch never had a considerable interest in simply admiring flowers for their own sake. "Wait, let me guess… Is it because of Alice's little gardeners over there?"

"Bingo. I've been curious about this project, ever since she mentioned them to me."

Marisa turned to the dolls, who were just about finished nurturing the plants in this corner of the garden. Their pre-planned moments had since been refined enough by Alice that they were flawlessly keeping a steady pace of taking turns troweling, watering, and so on before just as swiftly moving to the next spot.

"Obviously I'm used to seeing Alice's dolls moving around and stuff, but knowing that they're doing this all day even while she's taking a nap or something makes me wish I had a bunch of tiny helpers who could do all my chores for me. All the while I could be having lunch or something..."

"Really?" Yuuka moved beside Marisa, quirking an eyebrow at her. "You strike me as the type who wouldn't be satisfied if you don't do something with your bare hands."

"I just meant with like, putting away my clothes, or clearing my desk. I wouldn't want to give up the satisfaction of finding rare mushrooms myself or anything!"

Yuuka just smiled at that. Though she still couldn't imagine Marisa being happy with anybody, automatons or not, rearranging the things in her house.

"That reminds me, I'm a little surprised you're happy with these dolls helping out too. I figured you'd be the type to think…" Marisa cleared her throat, before doing her best impression of Yuuka's breezy voice. "...'_If the garden is nearing its end, that is just its natural conclusion and we shouldn't trouble ourselves to extend it._' Or something like that."

"You think so?" Yuuka glanced aside as she thought about that. "I would have accepted it fine if this garden were to keep declining, in fact I had accepted it already. It's inevitable that all these fields will disappear for good one day, like all plants."

"You must have been pretty upset about that." As far as Marisa knew, flowers was one of the only things in the world Yuuka showed any interest or care about.

"Perhaps. I was already thinking about it as if I was enjoying the last chapter of this field's lifespan. After all, I don't believe there's anything inherently tragic about beautiful things coming to a natural end."

"But I guess that didn't stick, huh?"

"Oh, my opinion on that hasn't changed at all. I'll happily say farewell to this or any other land's beauty when the time comes. But when I heard Alice talking about her self-sustaining dolls, especially in regards to planting flowers... I entertained the thought for just a moment, that maybe this garden could be kept going longer than I expected after all. Then I realised that thought… really made me happy."

"That makes sense. Actually it's pretty obvious, isn't it?" Marisa shrugged her shoulders. "If I wanted seafood for dinner but couldn't find any, I'd think I just have to settle for greens and berries, and that'd be just fine. But then if I suddenly found a slab of fish I forgot about in the back of my kitchen, I'd be thrilled about it. It's like that, right?"

"Yes, you've captured my experience perfectly." Yuuka stated in complete earnest.

"Plus, watching these dolls plant flowers and stuff is just really cute." Marisa turned her gaze back towards the dolls, a devious glint in her eye. "I wonder if I could get away with snatching one up? Alice sounded pretty confident about them handling any 'contingencies', so she might appreciate me giving her the chance to practice that."

"Always thinking about others, aren't you?"

"Yeah? I'm the most generous person I know of."

"Right, right. But you know, Alice is doing all this partially as a favour to me, so I'd feel compelled to protect those dolls." Yuuka leaned in closer, her voice keeping the same pleasant tone as she continued to speak. "...And to annihilate anyone who tries to touch them."

"Hey, now." Marisa chuckled, likewise still every bit as chipper in tone as before. "You haven't been giving that kind of warning to any of the fairies, have you?"

"You're a much bigger threat than any fairy, wouldn't you agree?"

"Of course I am! Thank you for saying."

Yuuka and Marisa exchanged a lighthearted chuckle. A few moments passed afterwards, where the two simply stood in peaceful silence. Yuuka's eyes narrowed ever so slightly, while Marisa's lips curved into a smirk.

"You want to see if you can stop me?"

"As long as you don't mind being made fun of afterwards."

The two of them both took to the air at that moment, Marisa shooting up high and drawing her mini-hakkero in one hand, while Yuuka slowly drifted upwards, her hands idly twirling her parasol.

While the two women moved to pass the time through a friendly duel, much further away was a butterfly fairy who had finally stopped fleeing, having flown over to the other end of the garden.

"Ugh, talk about rude!." Larva fluttered in mid-air as she scoffed aloud. There was nobody to hear her complaints but she felt the need to voice them aloud anyway. "I wonder if they're even more stubborn than that other group… Oh, speaking of!"

Larva looked down to the fields below and spotted that 'other group', the second batch of dolls, currently in the process of exchanging the soil from one plot of land to the next.

"Ooh, they're actually even prettier than those other girls. I wonder if they'll teach me how they sparkle like that?" Larva mused to herself, impressed with the way the dolls below appeared to glimmer slightly under the sunlight.

She was unaware that they were only glittering because she had sprayed those dolls with her scales so many times over the last several weeks, that a lot of the reflective scales had stuck onto them.

"Hey, I want to ask you all a question!" Larva, having learned no lessons whatsoever in the last twenty minutes, enthusiastically flew down and approached the dolls.

The speediness in her approach combined with her eager willingness to start prodding at the doll's bodies unprompted, would have once again meant it wouldn't take very long at all before she was once again designated a threat, which in turn would lead to her being jabbed with tiny lances and then shot at with projectiles, a process that has repeated in this garden many times by now.

None of that happened this time, however. The dolls had all stopped in place in order to gauge Larva, but they didn't react with violence when she prodded at them with her hands. Larva herself wasn't surprised at this though, since in her mind she was just being perfectly friendly.

"Hmm… You all don't talk very much, huh?" Larva tilted her head at the dolls, and a second later, all of them repeated the motion, tilting their little heads the same way "The way you're all dressed, I bet you speak one of those fancier languages like, um… What was one of them?"

Larva crossed her arms, leaning back as she racked her brain over what other languages. The answer was zero, and just as she realised that, she heard a voice, or rather several voices. "_I don't think I know any other languages after all._"

"Huh?" She blinked in confusion at the moment. She had heard that sentence repeated to her about six times in succession, and looked at the six dolls in front of her. "Oh! I was beginning to think you all actually couldn't talk at all."

"_I'm so glad!_" Larva heard the dolls 'say' to her, not realising that what she was hearing was actually her very own thoughts echoing through the dolls and then fed back to herself.

"Me too! Wow, it's kinda funny. You all sound exactly like how I thought you would."

The fairy continued talking with the dolls, which was functionally no different from talking to herself, not that Larva was aware of that, nor did she have any less fun finally holding a 'conversation' with them. She asked them questions, and she'd get back exactly the answer she was thinking of getting.

"Gosh, I know we only just started talking, but I think we get along really well!"

"_I hope we can be really good friends._" The dolls bounced back that thought at Larva, who was utterly delighted.

"Me too! I gotta start coming here even more often now…"

Meanwhile, at the other end of the garden, a 'friendly' duel had just passed its climax, with Marisa plunging towards the ground and crashing into the dirt.

"Ow ow ow…!" Marisa rubbed her sore spots, of which they were many, before glaring up at Yuuka. "Oi, that was seriously cheap! Just smacking me out of the sky like that…"

Yuuka lightly descended to the ground, and at a glance she appeared much worse-off than Marisa even though she was still smiling. One side of her clothes and hair were in complete disarray and even lightly charred. That was because instead of trying to dodge the last of Marisa's Master Sparks, she had simply flew right through it in order to approach Marisa, before delivering her own blow from point-blank.

"I know you like to play it loose, but you didn't just forget you're suppose to dodge the bullets, did you?"

"Sorry if I took you by surprise." Yuuka said, not sounding all that apologetic to Marisa. "But I thought it was appropriate for me to demonstrate how serious I am about protecting Alice's little gardeners. ...You're not mad at me, aren't you?"

"What, mad at you for nearly breaking my bones?" Marisa grumbled as she stood up and adjusted her hat. "Well, it's nice that you're serious about that, but 'demonstrate' it to somebody else next time. I wasn't serious about snatching one of them anyway. I'm lucky I landed on my bottom..."

"Oh, you definitely sound mad at me, and I feel bad about that." Yuuka suddenly put on a remorseful face, one that Marisa was hesitant to believe. "I'll let you hit me again to make up for it. You can use that Master Spark again too, and exterminate this troublesome youkai."

Marisa just stared incredulously at Yuuka. A part of her almost wanted to take up the youkai on her offer.

On the other hand, the magician was only slightly bruised as opposed to the youkai who currently looked like she had been jumped in the woods with torches, so Marisa doubt she would feel all that good about it.

"Forget it. I'll just beat you for real the next time we go at it." Marisa gave a flippant wave of her hand, deciding to brush aside the issue altogether.

"You're so magnanimous. I look forward to it!" Yuuka said, beaming at Marisa.

"Well, it's more like you're more trouble than it's worth sometimes." Marisa said, mostly because she wanted to get the last line in the matter.

She didn't linger around the garden for more than a few minutes before taking her leave, leaving Yuuka to continue enjoying the rest of her stroll.

* * *

'Well, if that's the case, I'm glad she stopped you from stealing my dolls." Alice casually said as she poured the tea into cups at her kitchen's counter.

"I wasn't really going to do that, come on." Marisa weakly protested while waiting at the table, not that she actually took any offense to the accusation.

Marisa was currently visiting her fellow magician, and had been invited inside for tea. She had figured that her experience in the garden with Yuuka the other day would make for a worthwhile or amusing story.

"Anyhow, if she's still visiting the garden often herself, you probably don't have anything to worry about, even if that doll youkai decides to act up again."

"Medicine knows better now. If anything, I was the only one who was 'acting up' back then." Alice reluctantly admitted, before bringing two cups of tea to the table and sitting herself across Marisa.

"You're still embarrassed about that whole thing?" It wasn't the first time Alice had brought up that incident around Marisa.

"Thinking about that scuffle again just reminds me how I need to update my repertoire of formations and spellcards, if I couldn't even properly stop one youkai."

"Well, I'm always available if you want to practice. I've got some new ideas I've been wanting to test out myself, like this move where I fire these five stars out below but then- Wait, wait, I shouldn't be ruining my element of surprise by telling you." Marisa laughed proudly at herself as she took a sip of tea.

"To be honest…" Alice wore a pensive expression as she sipped her tea between speaking. "I don't think there would be much point to us sparring."

"Wow, writing me off as an opponent before we even start, huh?"

"No, no, that's not what I meant. I just think I've shown you all the formations I do with my dolls at one point or another. In fact, I think most people who know me have seen all my techniques. I don't think there's anything to be learned from duelling until I've come up with some new ideas."

"What, does that mean you're never going to use your old tricks again? I remember you felt really good about coming up with that 'Little Legion' one."

"I was, but I really only used it against Medicine because she hadn't seen it before. I just… don't think it's impressive anymore? There's no point in hanging onto crafts or techniques that everyone has seen before. Nothing for me to learn from it, you know?"

"I can't relate. I never get tired of my Master Spark, even if others get tired of being blasted with it." Marisa said with a chuckle at her own words. "Even if it's not 'enlightening' to you or whatever, you should just do whatever is fun. That's how I operate.."

Alice shrugged her shoulders. "I don't see myself being satisfied with that, I'm afraid. I'm always thinking ahead about what worth that something has."

"That apply to everything you do? Not everything has to be 'productive' all the time to be satisfying. When was the last time you just did anything just for the fun of it?"

"I know how to have fun." Alice murmured indignantly. "...It's fun when I succeed on my projects, or discover breakthroughs in my research. All the things any dedicated magician would enjoy."

"Does it only have to be when you 'succeed'? I remember you got pretty excited while you were working on that spell to change your clothes' colours."

"Ugh, don't remind me of that. Literally the worst experiment I've ever done." Alice felt embarrassed just thinking about it. "And I let you talk me into it."

"Untrue! I was just being supportive of your creativity."

"I lost a lot of good dresses… Regardless, I still prefer working with definite goals in mind."

"If you say so. I just think you could do with a regular doses of acting a little wild."

"A little wild, huh?" Alice had to smile at that choice of wording. "I think you're wild enough for the both of us."

"I'll take that as a compliment." Marisa just smiled back, before finishing her tea. Even if she had her doubts about what Alice was saying, she'd take the other's word that she's just doing what she enjoys.

Alice was fairly certain herself of what she was saying. Improving and expanding her magical studies was her first priority at present. Even if it was stressful at times, just the thought of reaching the end of a series of tasks and having something to show for it filled Alice with a sense of optimism that couldn't be matched. She could only imagine the excitement that would come with actually seeing it through.

* * *

Nightfall in the Garden of the Sun meant that all across fields was a peaceful stasis, what with the complete silence and lack of winds, which was the closest the flowers ever came to 'sleeping'. Even the fairies who were frequently found playing among the fields in the daytime, would have all left and turned in for the night.

All with the exception of Eternity Larva, who was still fluttering through the air above the garden under the moonlight. For no reason she could explain, Larva was still filled with vigour despite having played all day. It was as if a strange energy enveloped her very being, encouraging her to keep going.

"Why did everyone else go home already? I still feel like I could do ten more races, or twenty more hide-and-seeks! Or even start dancing! Isn't there anybody around at all?"

"_I sure feel like dancing right now._" Once again, Larva heard her own thoughts echoed at herself, making her pause in the air as she gaze downwards for the source.

"Huh? Was that…" When she looked down, she spotted some of the idle gardener dolls out of the corner of her eye, but what actually grabbed her attention were the cluster of sunflowers just below her.

A cluster of sunflowers which she could have sworn was where the 'voice' she just heard came from. Not just one of the flowers, but all of them at once.

"Oh wow, could it be… You all want to play with me too?!"

"_I want to play!_" Larva had asked in earnest, and then received exactly the answer she thought of and wanted, since she basically gave it to herself. Feeling absolutely giddy upon finding a wealth of new friends, the fairy began to excitedly sway from side to side high in the air, humming happily to herself.

As she did this, the dolls near to the ground that were idle just before, began to act out the same motions as the fairy, swaying from side to side, and they weren't the only ones.

The sunflowers themselves, despite the lack of any strong breeze at the moment, also began to sway. The flowers 'danced' with Larva, while also growing inch by inch with each passing second...


	5. Chapter 5

_Log 147 _

_I can confidently say the Gardeners are now operating flawlessly, and it has been over two weeks since I've run into any errors of any kind. The upcoming final days of checking in on the field will mostly consist of routine check-ups to keep things going steady, and receiving Yuuka Kazami's opinion on the garden's foreseeable health._

_I estimate that she will be extremely pleased. She may try to appear cool and composed like she always does, but I will know how she really feels. I've no doubt she'll struggle to hold in her gratitude._

After checking the previous day's written log, Alice closed her notebook and handed it to one of her personal dolls who were accompanying her.

As the weeks went by, her notes became more personal little by little until it more resembled a journal. It also brought her a small bit of satisfaction too, to look over the notes and remind herself how much has been done.

It wasn't over quite yet, but it was enough time had passed that she still felt like reminiscing about the experience as a whole, and already wondering about what she would do next for her magical studies.

Alice pondered this while she headed towards the Garden of the Sun that morning. She had already moved past a few sunflower stalks when she tucked away her notebook, and it took a few seconds of walking down the dirt path until she realised something was very different from her previous visit just a few days earlier.

The Garden of the Sun has always been a beautiful spectacle of sunflowers, even during this time when Yuuka said it in decline. Alice had been enjoying more opportunities, intentionally or not, to bask in this exceptional example of nature's beauty ever since she started this project.

She noticed the flowers on either side of her as she walked towered up to nearly twice her height. She might never have thought about it before, but she could have sworn that were significantly shorter than that only less than a week ago. It was possible she had just unknowingly walked a different path where the flowers happened to be much taller, but she still couldn't recall ever seeing any of the plants around the area reaching that height.

"Was changing the fertiliser last week that effective...?" Alice muttered to herself, blinking at her surroundings. The large swaths of sunflowers continued on, every single plant looming tall. Now that she was staring at the flowers, they appeared to get even taller the deeper into the garden she walked. There was no longer any empty soil or even moderately-sized flowers to be found, only more sunflowers.

It was enough for Alice to simply gape in awe for a few moments as she really took in the almost-unnaturally bountiful fields, even though she thought she might be getting too used to the scenery. She soon spotted someone else in the distance, in the midst of taking in the sight as well.

"Yuuka?" Alice called out and approached Yuuka, who turned around to face her.

"Oh! Good morning..." Yuuka greeted in surprise. "Were you standing there for a while?"

"I just got here- Wait, you didn't realise I was around?" It took Alice a moment to realise why that fact was strange in of itself. "I thought the flowers always told you who comes in and out of the garden."

"The flowers were too busy to let me know."

"There flowers were… busy? With what?"

"Maybe 'distracted' is a better word?" Yuuka's eyes drifted to the large sunflowers, her expression carrying both curiosity and uncertainty. "The whole time I've been here, all I hear from them is something like singing, or chanting. It's been constant."

"Singing? The flowers?" Alice couldn't even fathom what that might sound like. Regardless, she could tell that Yuuka seemed just as confused by the scenery around her as she did. "Have you also noticed by the way, that the flowers are taller than before?"

"They're literally twice as tall as they were yesterday. That's hard to miss."

"So I wasn't just imagining it! Then, you didn't have anything to do with their 'growth spurt'?"

"Of course not. I told you I only offer an encouraging push for flowers on occasion, but nothing like this. I thought maybe you had decided to cast some other magic spell on these fields as part of your research?"

"If it was this easy to boost the plant's natural growth cycle with magic, then I would have been wasting a lot of time with my dolls, wouldn't I?" Not to mention that Alice wouldn't have chosen to experiment with any spells on the flowers that Yuuka cared so much about anyway. "Are you sure you didn't, I don't know, help them too much by accident?"

"That's not how it works. I should be asking you if you're sure you didn't have your dolls doing something peculiar to the flowers, hmm?" Yuuka leaned in, faking an accusatory tone as she pretended to leer at Alice.

"I don't know what you think they could have done to cause this. ...Also you seem a little on-edge about all this.I thought you of all people would actually be delighted at the garden being like this."

"I would be delighted if the flowers grew to this state on their own, but it's obvious that this isn't the case. Such an outrageous rate of growth forced on them will surely have adverse effects on their health in the long-run. Not to mention..."

"Not to mention…?"

"...They will not stop chanting about wanting to have an 'neverending party', or various things to that effect. It's honestly a bit overbearing. Even the village is never this loud."

"It's definitely a phenomenon worth investigating. I need to find my dolls first though. The flowers growing so suddenly might have disrupted their routines. Did you see where they are right now?"

"I haven't. I've been preoccupied examining these fields, even admiring them at times despite my concerns. It's as if every direction I go, another sunflower is bursting with the desire to reach for the sky."

"Okay, well which did you come in? I won't bother checking there."

"Actually… I think I might have lost track of which way I came in?" Yuuka admitted with a small smile. "I must have been in more of a daze than I realised."

"I think there's such a thing as getting too engrossed in flower-viewing. I'll just keep heading… Um..."

Alice looked around, trying to recall which way did she come in, and which was the path leading deeper into the garden. She quickly realised that she couldn't quite tell anymore, the dirt roads and the expanses of sunflowers all looking indistinguishable wherever she turned her head.

"Which way was it…?"

"Got rather engrossed too, didn't you?"

"No. Maybe? I just… everything looks the same, wherever I turn. This could be really annoying…"

"Are those dolls on you able to track them down or anything?"

"What, these?" Alice glanced to her personal entourage of dolls currently accompanying her. "They don't have any function like that."

"Shame, I always imagined they had each other's scent or something."

"It's not as if they're dogs or anything." Alice glanced to her left and right, unsure where to start. "If I try flying from above the fields, I might never spot those gardener dolls among all these tall flowers."

"In that case, do you mind if I accompany you? It doesn't seem like I can ask the flowers anything right now, either way."

"It can't hurt." With that, Alice and Yuuka began walking down a path, having picked a random direction to start off. WIth no immediate bearing or indication to go one way or another, there wasn't much to do other than keep moving one way.

They walked in silence together. Alice didn't have much in mind for conversation at the moment, but she half-expected Yuuka to be making comments of some kind. Yuuka was too distracted at the moment, perhaps because of the flower's 'overbearing voices', Alice thought.

After a few more minutes of walking, with no real reference of how deep into the garden they were, they finally spotted the familiar dolls. Not just one of the designated groups Alice had separated them into, but all of the dozen or so dolls at once.

"Oh, there they are! Why are they all in one place...?" Alice moved closer to the dolls, and quickly realised that them being in one place was by far the least strange thing going on. "Is that… a tree?"

All of the dolls were circling what looked like a thick tree trunk. Upon closer inspection though, the 'trunk' was a dark-green colour, and when Alice gazed upwards, her jaw dropped at what she saw.

The 'tree' was actually one gigantic sunflower, the oversized yellow petals from the equally large flowerhead blocking out most of the skies from view.

"Oh my." Yuuka exclaimed quietly to herself. "This is just a hunch, but I think we're at the center of the garden."

"I don't even know where to begin." Alice blinked at the monstrous sunflower for a few more seconds before turning back to her dolls, deciding she'd need to collect them before doing anything else. "First things first, I'll… Hey, what are they doing?"

All of the dolls were circling the thick stalk of the giant sunflower, and as they did so, they were also swaying from side to side in a rhythmic fashion, and all in perfect sync with each other.

"It looks like they're dancing?" Yuuka tilted her head at the odd sight, though she also found it to be rather cute. "Are they celebrating because the garden they've been nurturing is now in full splendor?"

"I… I don't know. They're not supposed to do anything like this. I definitely never put 'dancing' in their scripts." Alice continued to blink in confusion at the scene before her, before letting out a sharp gasp. "C-Could it be… they've gained a will of their own!?"

"And the first thing they decide to do is a synchronised dance?" Yuuka asked, skeptical.

"B-But if they've acted out on their own, then this is a breakthrough! I never even considered this could happen...!" Alice's mind raced with numerous theories on how the dolls might have grown sentient when she wasn't looking. "If only I knew what they've been doing all day… Did they collectively decide they really love flowers after working on them for so long?!"

"Maybe we could ask her?" Yuuka said, pointing up high, at something just barely visible in the sky.

"Huh?" Alice looked up, only then did she finally noticed that this whole time, there was someone in the air, the silhouette of her large wings fluttering rapidly as she swayed side to side. "It's… that butterfly fairy, isn't it?"

Eternity Larva basked in the bright sunlight as she swayed in the air. She looked the same as ever to both Alice and Yuuka, but something about the movements of her body through the sky appeared simultaneously more weighty than before, like she was carrying herself with a more serene bliss than her usual erratic enthusiasm.

"...Oh!" Yuuka spoke up all of a sudden. "I couldn't entirely make sense of what the flowers were going on about, but I think... they're chanting for Miss Eternity."

"What? They are?" That honestly didn't reveal anything to Alice, and only further confused her. Either way, she decided she would just ask the fairy herself and called out to her. "Hello? Larva! Down here!"

It took a moment for the fairy to register the voice calling her, and then another for her to pinpoint the source below. With an enthusiastic expression, she floated down to meet the two new arrivals. Up close, they could see that there was a particularly lustrous glow to her wings this morning.

When she did so, the dancing dolls all suddenly stopped in place, and they all turned towards Alice and Yuuka.

"It's good to see you both again." Larva politely addressed them, while floating in the air just high enough above the ground to meet them roughly at eye-level. "Are you here to join the party?"

"No, sorry." Alice said, suddenly more curious about the odd behaviour of her dolls again, but she'd find her answers one at a time. "Do you know what's happening with the garden, why all the sunflowers got so big?"

"The garden? It's as beautiful as ever, isn't it? The flowers are even cheering me on today." Larva said with a chuckle, feeling a giddy energy within herself.

"You can tell?" Yuuka asked, more intrigued herself about what was going on. "Can you hear what they are saying? Better yet, do you know why they are acting like this?"

"Do they need a reason? If you really need one, then I suppose it's because they're full of energy, they want to celebrate and have fun all day. Same goes for these new friends of mine." Larva explained, spreading her arms to gesture to the dolls around her.

"New friends? Them? ...Then, are you the one making my dolls act like that?" Alice asked, unable to hide the slight disappointment in her voice upon realising that her dolls probably have not actually gained sentience.

"Making them? That's rather rude to assume, isn't it? They all came to me and told me they wanted to be my friends. I was so happy! Of course, I knew I'd rub off on them eventually with how hard I was trying."

Between Larva's bright smile and the dazzling gleam of her wings, she looked like such an innocent creature that Alice almost felt foolish for being angry at her. That said, it was obvious by now that the fairy had something to do with strange phenomena around them, if not being outright responsible.

Alice was still thinking about what to say next when Yuuka addressed Larva. "Miss Eternity, I know you're having fun, but whatever it is you did to the flowers, it is not good for them. I can tell now they're bursting with unnatural energies, and will eventually burn themselves out."

"No way that it'll happen." Larva replied in confidence, which only further annoyed Yuuka. "The flowers are as excited as I am, and I don't feel myself burning out anytime soon."

"Okay, trying to get answers from you is pointless. I'll be relinquishing control of my dolls now." Alice stated tiredly, doing a sweeping motion with her hands to manually reattach her spirtual strings to the gardener dolls.

Alice felt the strings connect, as she had done so hundreds of times before with her dolls. Yet when she pulled for them to come to her, she was confused when she was met with a sensation of resistance.

"Huh?" She tried once more, and to her even greater surprise, she felt the strings all 'snapped' from the tension. "I can't… connect to them?"

"What are you doing?" Larva tilted her head at Alice… and all the dolls matched the gesture as well, tilting their heads. "If you ask me, you talk like you're the one trying to make them do something."

Alice stared in shock between the Larva and the dolls all moving with the same motions, and when she further noticed the subtle glimmer that the dolls had on them, she slowly came to several conclusions at once. "...It's because you're already connected to them! How did you do that?!"

"Connected? Is that… a fancy way of saying what good friends we are?"

It didn't sound like even Larva knew this odd circumstances came about, so Alice dropped the questions. "Nevermind. I'll just take the dolls back by hand."

"Hey, hold on a moment!" Larva had said, but Alice simply ignored her.

Alice walked forward, but before she could think too far about how she was going to carry a dozen of her dolls in her arms, the dolls suddenly moved away from her, huddling behind Larva. "Hey! Give them back to me!"

"My friends are all scared of you too! Maybe they'd like you more if you didn't have such a scary look on your face…"

Retrieving her dolls was going to be more of a hassle than she thought. As she stared at Larva and her dolls in disbelief, she further elaborated her thoughts aloud. "Her will is being imprinted on them instead of mine. Somehow she's turned my spell into her own.."

"...It isn't just the dolls." Yuuka added, narrowing her eyes at Larva. "Everytime she speaks, the flowers express the same sentiment. It's as if they are all sharing the same will as Miss Eternity."

"Okay, now I know you're talking about how close we all are!" Larva seemed pleased at what Yuuka was saying, despite the stern expression on the latter's face.

"This has gone beyond just a fairy's whim. I need you to stop this."

If you insist on affecting the flowers with whatever magic you've used on them, I'll have to personally punish you and your friends."

"Wait, hold on." Alice quickly spoke up from beside Yuuka. "You can leave my dolls out of it, can't you? I need to examine their inner workings for any compromises and-"

Alice lost her train of thought, when all of their surroundings appeared to shake at once with a loud rustling sound. It was the floors that were shaking, as if stirring in what Yuuka, and even Alice, could only make out to be irritation.

"I think…" Yuuka slowly said. She couldn't help but feel like the flowerheads were now all facing towards them. "...they're looking at us."

"I was hoping I was just imagining it…" Alice replied, unable to shake the feeling of being surrounded.

"Wait just a minute, you two!" Larva stood straight, fists by her side as she pouted at Alice and Yuuka. "I don't like a single thing either of you have said since you got here. It sounds like all you want is to put a damper on our party."

"What, your party of one?" Alice gestured frantically to their surroundings as she spoke. "How do you not realise everything here is only because you're willing it to be so?! I don't know how you did it, but even a fairy has to realise nothing about this is normal!"

"Hmm…" Larva seemed to actually consider Alice's words for a moment, before responding. "You're right that this doesn't feel normal. It feels really special."

"Special?" Alice blinked at Larva. She noticed that along with the luster in the fairy's wings, Larva also had an intense gleam in her eyes as well.

"I've never felt more energised, more excited! We've all decided we're going to make a new world out of this garden all for ourselves, where we'll have an everlasting party."

Alice just stared at Larva for a moment in utter bewilderment. "I think whatever's driving the garden into a frenzy is affecting you too. I don't know where to even begin if I want to learn more about this…"

"Oh?" Larva grinned upon hearing that. "If you want to know more about our new world, you just have to join in! We're all giddy to invite more people."

As if responding to Larva's desires, several nearby sunflower stalks began to extend and twist, much faster than any plant should be able to move, expanding to the sides of Larva... before creeping slowly towards Alice.

Alice grimaced and recoiled, and immediately summoned her personal entourage of combat-ready dolls in front of her. "Do not come near me with those!"

Alice sent her dolls forward, easily chopping up the stalks into little pieces with their weapons, a display which Larva gasped at. "That's so vicious! I heard you were anti-social but that's going way over the line!"

"Wha- Where did you hear that from? Who is saying that to fairies?"

"Alice, was that really necessary? The flowers are a victim here too." Yuuka frowned at Alice, who just frowned back incredulously.

"I don't really have the privilege to be delicate right now!" Alice snapped back. She then noticed out of the corner of her eyes something peculiar about the flowers she just cut down. "Huh? Are they-"

The flower stalks had retreated backwards, but after doing so, the stalks instantly grew until all the previous harm to them had been regenerated within seconds.

Alice resisted the urge to gulp. "Yuuka, I don't know if those flowers are the ones in any danger here."

"No, I'm still certain." Yuuka stated in a severe tone. "That magic influencing them will only cause them all to decay before long."

Larva meanwhile, petted those flowers on the petals out of sympathy. "You should be lucky these friends don't bruise easily."

Alice groaned to herself, her frustration about to reach its boiling point. "I need to take control of this situation."

She turned her attention to the gardener dolls, who were motioning shocked gestures much like Larva. She didn't like the thought of purposefully damaging her dolls, but if Alice wanted to get the gardeners back immediately, she decided her best option was to have her entourage forcibly drag them back to her side.

Alice sent her four lancer-wielding dolls charging forward, flying in an arc through the air before coming right up to the gardeners and grabbing onto them, before dragging them away from Larva.

"Hey, your friends are a lot more pushy than mine." Larva didn't immediately react to this, only commenting sourly on things.

Alice was just glad Larva was choosing not to interfere. She continued to instruct her dolls to drag her gardeners along… until they suddenly stopped in place. "Huh?"

Alice's personal entourage suddenly froze in place. In the brief scuffle, the glimmering sheen of the other dolls had spread to them as well. They then, without Alice's input, simply let go of the gardeners and moved beside Larva as well.

"W-What?!" Alice's was dumbfounded. She pulled and swung her hands frantically, but the dolls showed no response to her. A second later, those same spiritual strings snapped from the tension as well. "No way…"

Alice wasn't the only one shocked, as Larva was delightfully surprised at this turn of events and even spoke to the new 'additions' of her group. "Oh wow, you all want to join us too?"

"How..." Alice only had two dolls left on her side, but now she too afraid to try sending them towards Larva. "This is like a bad dream."

It was at this point that Yuuka spoke up as she stepped past Alice. "Let me try a more direct approach."

Larva met Yuuka's eyes with curiosity. "Oh? I know how this goes. You want to duel it out to see who's strongest, right? Then if I win, you'll have to join our party and-"

Yuuka did not wait for Larva to finish talking before she unleashed a massive laser beam, big enough to completely envelop Larva and vapourising the fairy in an instant. The laser subsided as soon as it had come out, leaving only fading energy particles and fairy dust behind.

Fairies being basically immortal meant they always came back anywhere between a few hours or a few days after they are destroyed, but Yuuka still didn't enjoy resorting to such force to deal with them, as opposed to teaching them a lesson in other more creative ways. She let out a sigh. "I wish Miss Eternity would have been more complying, but if… Huh."

Alice noticed the odd pause. "What is it?"

"I just noticed the flowers haven't calmed down at all-"

In the very next moment, there was a flash of light, and Larva reappeared exactly where she was previously floating, literally good as new, though holding her head.

"Ow… That's playing a bit rough, isn't it?" Larva winced, like she had just taken a light tap on her head instead of being reduced to dust.

Yuuka and Alice both blinked at Larva for a moment, having regenerated a _lot_ faster than any fairy should be able to, though Yuuka shook off the surprise quickly. "So whatever power has affected you has made you persistent, has it?"

"I don't know about 'persistent', but I definitely feel like I could keep going? In fact, my headache is already gone!"

"In that case, perhaps I need to take my time dismantling you before you get the point?" Yuuka narrowed her eyes as she approached the fairy.

"I don't know what that means, but it sounds intense…!" Larva said half-nervously, as she backed up slowly.

Just as Yuuka raised her hand towards Larva, she suddenly felt something latching around her waist. "Huh?"

She looked down, and saw that one of the sunflowers had sprang out from the side and coiled around her, to keep her from approaching Larva.

"Ah, my friends are tagging in for me! I wasn't hopeful for my chances anyway." Larva said with a sigh of relief. She then flew higher into the sky, beginning to take her exit. "I'll leave you all to have at it. If my new friends win, they'll show you the way to my party, alright? I'd really like to see you two again later!"

Larva started flying higher into the sky, leaving everyone including the gardener dolls behind, and would be out of sight within seconds once she flew past the giant sunflower's petals.

"We're not finished." Yuuka called out to Larva, and quickly tried to fire off another beam at her. She's interrupted when another sunflower stretched out and snapped around her wrist, to her dismay.

The flowers were not discouraged by her words, and several more of them wrapped around her, before slowly lifting her up into the air.

"Yuuka!" Alice yelled out in concern. "Just tear them apart!"

"I'm not a brute who would raise her hand against-" Yuuka trailed off when both she and Alice noticed something else was moving high above them.

The top of gigantic sunflower slowly dropped downwards, the middle of its oversized flowerhead faced Yuuka and Alice as if it was peering down at them. The large petals appeared to spread apart slightly as the stalks carrying Yuuka brought her closer towards it.

Yuuka couldn't be certain, but it was starting to feel as if she was about to be fed to the giant sunflower. She was naturally only slightly concerned at this as she stared in subdued astonishment. "Okay, maybe I should-"

"-aaaaah!" Alice let out a panicked yell as she sent what remained of her doll entourage towards Yuuka. They quickly cut apart the flowers holding her.

Yuuka dropped back to the ground on her feet, and she turned to Alice, half-grateful towards her and half-annoyed at the shredded plant matter around her. "Alice, I was just about to slowly unravel them without-"

"Shut up! We need to get away from-" Alice was so focused on the sunflowers already regenerating themselves, that she noticed a second too late that Larva's 'friends', the glittering former gardeners, had approached Alice's troops. "Hey! Don't-"

Before Alice could direct her dolls to retreat, the troops were either hugged or gently tugged on by the former gardeners, acting on Larva's desire to simply ask or encourage more friends to join them. That brief bit of contact was all that was needed for Alice's remaining dolls to fall under whatever this spell was. Alice's will imparted on the dolls was pushed out and replaced with Larva's, as the strings that connected them to the magician snapped.

Now with all the dolls on her gone, Alice was stuck without a lot of options, a fact she didn't get to ponder on for very long as the giant sunflower distinctly started to move it's large flowerhead towards her and Yuuka. "Y-Yuuka, you can blast that giant flower apart, can't you?!"

"Even if I was willing to do that, it would just grow back in an instant!" Yuuka retorted, also stepping back from the approaching flowerhead before a huge leaf was 'slammed' on the ground in front of them, reminiscent of a beast slamming its claw down. "Besides, that'd be like trying to stomp on a hundred flowers at once. Impossible and also horrible."

"We're the ones who are going to get stomped on!" Alice yelled back. It wasn't just the giant flower or its somehow-menacing leaves, but all the surroundings sunflowers looked like they were ready to move in on them too.

It was obvious by now, that there was nothing to do but turn tail.

"We should go." Alice and Yuuka both said to the other at that moment. They took flight and retreated back the way they came, barely avoiding the large leaf that swept at them.

The sounds of wildly rustling sunflowers faded as they moved further away. As the two flew, Yuuka spoke up.

"You're an expert on magic, right? Any insight about how to fix this?"

"I don't even know right now, but I need to get back to my house, rearm myself with new dolls, and maybe come up with some kind of spell to…" Alice trailed off, as her eyes started scanning her immediate surroundings. "Wait, are we headed the right way?"

Alice stopped in her tracks. The path before her was no longer familiar, and when she looked up, she saw that all the sunflowers were tall enough to block out most of the sky. Either she had come the wrong way, or these flowers had grown dozens of times their height during the course of their encounter with Larva. The latter possibility was unfortunately the most likely one, Alice realised.

More concerning than that is that she couldn't make heads or tails of which way was the exit, as if the surroundings had completely rearranged themselves…

"I know we were definitely going the right way." Yuuka said as she scrutinised the surroundings as well. "I think… the garden doesn't want us to leave."

"Are you serious? ...Above. I'll just go above everything." Alice turned to what little of the blue sky she could make out past the towering flowers and leaves, and flew straight towards it.

Before she was made it even halfway to the skies however, a flurry of speedy sunflowers, whipping out like vines from all sides, lashed out at her.

"Woah!" Alice immediately stumbled back, letting herself be dropped back down by gravity as a frightening amount of erratically moving stalks were all either whipping at her, or reaching to grab her.

Alice didn't have time to readjust herself mid-fall, but she was fortunately caught by Yuuka, who held her with one arm around Alice's back. Yuuka used other hand to swat at the vines with her parasoul like it was a heavy object.

Whether because of Yuuka's swinging prowess, or because they were no longer high up enough to be deemed worth bothering, the flowers retracted, and the garden was quiet again for the moment.

"I had a feeling that would happen." Yuuka muttered, lowering both of them to the ground.

Alice got to her feet and took a moment to steady herself. "Thank you… But what do you mean by a feeling?"

"All the flowers around us doesn't want anyone leaving their exclusive party, probably because that's what Miss Eternity wants too. I don't know how much of it all is a subconscious desire on her part, or if perhaps she's a lot more malicious than she lets on, but her will is the will of the garden's right now."

"There's no other exit then." Alice's expression slowly turned more grave. "I mean, we can't fly up. We can't find which way to walk out. I don't have any more dolls…"

"Even if I was okay tearing a hole through the flowers, they grow right back in an instant."

"...We're trapped."

"Looks like it. It is a bit of a conundrum, I admit, what with- ...Alice?" Yuuka blinked curiously as Alice just turned around and slowly walked a few, heavy steps.

Alice looked up once more and all around her, the towering sunflowers looming on all sides. This was no longer a garden of flowers, but a twisted forest made from a manic fairy's mind. Worse than even that fact however, was that if Alice's current assumptions about how this all came to be were correct, then it was a twisted forest of her own creation…

Needless to say, the spell to change the colours of her clothes was no longer the worst experiment she's ever done.


	6. Chapter 6

The skies, what little of it could be seen past all the looming leaves and petals, were as clear as can be. Beams of sunlight poured through the scattered spaces with a warm, teasing light for those on the ground. Even if Alice wanted to go for a stroll in the Garden of the Sun, she was much too occupied at the moment.

The magician wiped the sweat off her brow, and looked up at her current adversary. She didn't like to admit it, but it had been a very long time since she has exerted herself to such an extent, having relied on her dolls for any labour that proved even slightly cumbersome for so long. Now she had no choice but to deal with matters with her actual bare hands. Being a magician youkai, she was certainly sturdier than any regular human, but she was still doubting her ability to accomplish the herculean task ahead of herself.

The herculean task of plucking petals from a flower.

When Alice had tried simply bending one of the tall stalks so their flowerhead wouldn't be so high up, the stalk had responded by jerking out of her hand and whipping her in the face.

She then tried a simple spell to summon some wind upwards that might blow some petals down to her, but anything stronger than gust made the flowers react violently, swatting her to the ground again.

Her final resort was a simple one, charing right at the flowers at full-speed and hoping for the best. The only result was unfortunately being slapped by leaves that certainly felt thicker than they looked.

Eventually, Alice floated to the ground, with nothing to show for her efforts aside from even more bruises. The only thing she could think to do was to make another note of it, on the off-chance it proves to be useful for later. She pulled out her notebook and pen.

_day ii log iv_

_The plants do not let up. They are ever-ready to strike down anyone who disrupts them, or to drag me into some darker depths should I get too close. There are no faces on them, but I can feel their intent on me at all times, how they enjoy watching me scurry to and fro with no chance of escape._

_This is no longer a garden, but a twisted forest. Right now, I am like a mouse in a maze, where the maze itself is rearranged at the whims of those watching from above._

"Wait, maybe it's redundant to say it's both a 'forest' and a 'maze'..." Alice muttered to herself, striking out the last line of her overdramatic log.

She looked up, catching a glimpse of clouds parting, and it reminded her how she's missed her usual designated time for brunch. It further reminded her how this field of berserk flowers would probably either devour her, or keep her here until she starved. ...Not that a magician youkai like herself actually needed to eat in the first place, but that didn't take away from how dire the situation was in her mind.

From off to the side, Alice was approached by Yuuka, who called out to her. "Didn't go so well for you either?"

"No, I couldn't get even one sample. They just repelled you too, huh?"

"I'm afraid so. All the flowers just keep ignoring me, and had no interest in letting me get close without trying picking a fight."

"Uh, did you try anything past just asking them nicely?" Alice asked, noticing that compared to her own battered self, Yuuka was still perfectly clean.

"They were quite adamantly against me approaching, so it wasn't worth disturbing them."

"...Alright, they made that clear to me too." Alice gestured to her dirt-covered skirt.

"I admit, I'm growing more concerned by the minute." Yuuka glanced to the various flowers with a downcast expression. "I can practically feel all the flowers burning on the inside from all their 'excitement'. They won't last for more than a few weeks.

"I don't want them to… 'burn out' either." After all the recent endeavors inflicted on her, Alice had almost forgotten that it was the flowers themselves who stood to suffer the most from all this. Although the thought of being trapped here for weeks was admittedly much more concerning to her. "I'll have to try another method for collecting samples."

The exact plan at the moment was to collect samples from the flowers that had the highest chance of revealing exactly what nature of magic is affecting them, though it was more like the beginnings of a plan.

"I think the petals are a lost cause."

"I thought you said something like… it needed to be something small enough to remain distinct, while being just sizeable enough to analyse?"

"I know I said that, but it's not working out." Alice scratched her hair, contemplating her next move. "The only other parts of the flowers I can think of I could check are the roots. That will definitely be more tedious..."

"Maybe you ought to take a break? You look like you just got beaten down, after all, and not even for just the first or second time today."

"Take a break to do what, look at the flowers? ...Besides, I'm more suited to being up and about, looking for a way to resolve things. I couldn't relax otherwise."

"I see." Yuuka nodded, and even sounded pleased. "That's surprisingly gung-ho for you. I mean a pleasant surprise, that is."

"Yeah, well…" If Alice was acting 'gung-ho' about anything, it was because she knew that if she stopped to think about what a catastrophic failure her 'doll garden' project had become, she would probably just want to do nothing but wallow in despair.

The situation wasn't ideal for much pondering, and Alice decided that for now, she would keep moving, and hopefully the answers would make themselves apparent in time.

"All I can do is just to keep going. Let's hopefully fix this sooner than later." Alice clasped her hands together, trying to get herself pumped and ready to get to work.

"Agreed. I can't imagine how the garden must look to anyone from the outside."

"Yeah. Hopefully, nobody will think to visit the garden today for any reason."

* * *

"What… in the world?" Narumi had wondered if she was just seeing things from a distance, but now that she had walked up close to where one of the garden's entrances ought to be, she realised the flowers were in fact, ridiculously tall. Even the trees in the Forest of Magic weren't this tall.

She couldn't even see any proper way to 'enter' the garden, the flower stalks and leaves in front of her were so condensed together that there was no space to slip through.

It would have felt strange for Narumi to simply turn around and go home, especially after coming across something so bizarre, but she was also lacking available options as well.

While she was continued pondering the very peculiar sight, she heard someone else speak up from her left. "Excuse me!"

Narumi turned to see a stranger approaching her, blonde and even shorter than she was.

"I'm trying to find a way into the garden. I came here to visit some friends." Medicine explained, just a little short of breath due to having circled a good chunk of the field's perimeter, but only having found more and more thick groups of sunflower blocking the way deeper within. "Were you just coming out or…?"

"Actually, I came to visit a friend of mine too, but I got stuck at… this." Narumi gestured vaguely at wall of flowers beside her. As she took another look at Medicine, something about her appearance struck out as familiar to her. "...Say, you wouldn't happen to be here to visit someone named Alice Margatroid, are you?"

"Hardly." Medicine responded with a scoff. "I'm here to visit the dolls she's employed to do her gardening."

"Ah, so you must be Medicine! She's mentioned me to you. I'm a magician too, my name is Narumi-"

"Right, so you don't know to get in either, huh?" Medicine turned to the flowers again with an annoyed expression. It was both bizarre and greatly frustrating to have her path blocked like this. "I kept wondering if I somehow came to the wrong place entirely."

"I wonder if her dolls just did that good a job at growing the flowers?" Narumi muttered to herself, before her eyes slowly trailed from the flowers and over to Medicine.

Medicine noticed rather quickly that she was being stared at. "...Is something the matter?"

"Oh, sorry! It's just… I've always been a little curious about you!" Narumi admitted, just a little excitedly. "You used to be a doll, right? Then the residual magic in your area brought you to life, right? I can personally relate to that."

"Uh…" Medicine quirked an eyebrow as Narumi leaned in closer. "Well, for one, I didn't _used _to be a doll. I still _am_ one, and proud of it. Also, you're very close."

"Hm? ...Oh, sorry!" Narumi backed up a step, and gave a sheepish smile. "I'm curious about the conditions of the place you come from, if it's anything like the forest I come from."

"Well, you can feel free to go check it out if you feel like dealing with all the poisonous lilies, and phantoms."

"Oh, that doesn't sound too pleasant..." Narumi's excitement went down a notch immediately, the thought of exploring outside too far from her house was already an exhausting idea, and doing so someplace so dangerous even more so.

Medicine turned her attention back to the wall of flowers, just as unsure of how to proceed as she was a few minutes earlier. "I really don't want to just turn back after coming all this way."

"I was thinking the same." Narumi agreed. "Maybe there's a way in on the other side, or-"

As the both of them pondered what to do, they became aware of some strange sounds in the air. It sounded like a faint mix of fast-whipping wind, lasers flying, and angry shouting. Looking up, they both soon a familiar silhouette flying overhead on a broomstick.

"Ah!" Narumi hurriedly shouted for the other's attention. "Marisa! Over here!"

Marisa glanced down, and upon spotting the others, descended towards them before landing on her feet next to the wall of flowers as well. "Naruko! You were here too? Oh, the big doll too."

"I just got here." Narumi said. "What are you doing here?"

"More importantly." Medicine asked, just as curious. "What were you doing a second ago? It sounded chaotic."

"Well, to answer all that at once… I was planning on visiting Alice for brunch, but she wasn't home."

"What's brunch?" Medicine asked.

"That's just what she calls lunch sometimes, I think it's weird too. Anyway, I figured she was here at the garden, so I came and what do I find? Giant sunflowers that won't let me in!"

"What do you mean they won't let you in?"

"I mean, I tried just flying over all of them, but then a bunch of them actually stretched out and then tried knocking me out of the sky!" Marisa made a wild, swinging gesture of her arms, which Narumi and Medicine assumed was probably was supposed to be like a vicious sunflower. "I tried fighting back, but they all managed to push me back."

"You _fought_ the flowers?" Medicine asked, incredulously. "I don't think Yuuka will be happy about that."

"Not like I won anyway… Every time I shot one down, it just grew right back! Even fairies aren't that persistent… Hey, Naruko, you know anything about this?"

"Huh? Me?" Narumi blinked in confusion, wondering for a moment if Marisa could be referring to someone else.

"Yeah! You're all about that life magic, right? You've even used it to make your crops grow. And all these flowers are looking pretty 'lively' to me."

"Before you say anything else, I didn't have anything to do with this. Even if I used my magic on the flowers here, it certainly wouldn't turn out like… this!" Narumi waved her hand vaguely at the sunflowers, still unsure how to describe the situation. 'Overgrowth' didn't quite cut it.

"I guess we'll have to ask Alice." Marisa shrugged, before turning her body towards the sunflowers. "She's not home, and she didn't leave a note about going to the village, so the only place she could be is here."

"That makes sense." Narumi likewised turned to the flowers, concern now showing on her face. "Do you think Alice might be in trouble? I'm starting to worry."

"I'm worried too." Medicine had a similar expression, though she decided against adding that she was more worried about those tiny gardeners than anyone else. "I was thinking of just flying overhead too, but if that's not an option either, then I-"

"Then we just have to make our own way in!" Marisa exclaimed, and then suddenly pointed her mini-hakkero right at the thick wall of flowers in front of her.

Neither Narumi or Medicine got further than a shout of surprise or protest before Marisa blasted a gaping hole among the flowers, smoke and charred bits of plant matter flying everywhere.

"Geez..." Narumi said, covering her ears from the sudden loud blast. "A warning would have been nice."

"Are you out of your mind?!" Medicine threw up her arms as she shouted at Marisa. "Are all magicians obsessed with explosions!?"

"Hey, I-" Marisa started to say, but then noticed the flowers around the burning hole she made were already beginning to regenerate. "No time to talk! I'm getting to the bottom of this incident right now!"

Marisa charged in with a grin, her mini-hakkero pointed forward. A few seconds later, another loud blast was heard as Marisa continued blasting a path open for herself.

"Wait, I'm coming too!" Narumi shouted after Marisa, and quickly followed.

"I suppose this works…!" Medicine said resignedly to herself, following the magicians as well before the sunflowers regenerated behind them all.

* * *

Alice was crouched low to the ground, picking at the roots of a nearby flower with a hemostat she had only used for fixing her dolls. Her limbs were getting sore after taking and holding that position multiple times after moving from one plant to another, but she continued to meticulously collect small samples from the roots.

Using the hemostat, she was only able to pick at very discreet, miniscule pieces in order to avoid aggravating the plants into retaliation, yet she also needed to collect enough to fill a small bottle in order to make any worthwhile examination. Then she had to repeat those steps for multiple plants across the garden. She figured aiming near the roots had been the best option, since she was trying to learn about their unusual growths.

A short distance behind Alice stood Yuuka looking bored. She had mostly been watching Alice move from one spot to the next, picking slowly at the plants for the better part of an hour now. She wasn't able to assist, especially without knowing exactly what Alice was looking for anyway.

After a few more minutes, Alice finally stood up and dropped the last of the tiny bits of plant matter she had collected into a small bottle. She looked down at the bottle with a deeply focused gleam in her eyes as she spoke aloud to herself. "Okay... Okay, I think… I think I understand."

"No rush." Yuuka walked up beside Alice, curious as to what, if anything, there was to see. "Care to let me know what's on your mind? I haven't really been able to tell what you've been doing"

"Right, okay..." Alice took a moment to steady herself, stretching her sore muscles and letting the numbness in her head fade. "Sorry for making you wait. It must've been boring for you."

"It's fine. I have nothing but patience, even if I finished your stories a while ago."

"It's just a theory but… Wait." Alice turned her head to Yuuka. "What do you mean by 'my stories'?

"Whoops, did I say that last part aloud?" Yuuka glanced away guiltily, or at least she was pretending to look guilty. "Well, to help pass the time, I've been looking through this."

Yuuka pulled out a compact notebook, the same one that Alice had been using for recording her logs on this project from the beginning. Her eyes widened in shock, and she quickly patted herself over just to confirm that the notebook was in fact, not on her person. "When did you-!?"

"It fell out of your pockets the first time you scrunched over the dirt. I was going to let you know that I picked it up…" Yuuka said, before flipping it open again and skimming a random page. "...But these little logs were surprisingly engrossing. You describe simple things with such a dramatic flair. I feel like I understand your mindset a lot better-"

"Give me that!" Alice hurriedly walked up to Yuuka and snatched the notebook right out of her hand, turning away as she put it away. She muttered gravely to herself. "I'm officially finished with the logs."

"Aw, just when I became a fan." Yuuka then tapped Alice on the shoulder when the other refused to look at her. "So you were saying something about a theory?"

"How much did you read?" Alice replied with her own urgent question.

"Is that really the most important thing right now?"

"Ugh… Fine!"

Alice turned back around to properly face Yuuka. She had enough things on her to be stressed about, so she resigned to put off the matter of the logs as best she could.

"Look at these." Alice took out two bottles, both containing samples of plant matter she had collected. She had several of these different bottles of similar contents on her person by now, but these two in particular had turned out to be the best for comparison.

...Not that Yuuka could tell just from looking at the bottles. "What am I supposed to be seeing?"

"Notice how the samples in this bottle, have a hint of a gleam to them under the sunlight?" Alice explained, holding the bottle high up, trying to let the sun's rays hit it just right.

"Maybe? Wait, no, I think I do see it." Though Yuuka had to squint rather intently on the tiny bits of glitter.

"And then this one! From a flower batch closer to the center of the garden, it gleams even more… and it vibrates more erratically provoked!" Alice held up the other bottle, and gave it a shake.

Yukka squinted at the bottles, the difference in their 'gleam' was incredibly subtle, but she could see it. Although she was certain the part about the particles vibrating more 'erratically' was just in Alice's head. "It does look pretty, I think. Actually, now that I think about it, it reminds me of… Miss Eternity."

"It's just like that fairy's wings, right!? So, then she was… but then my dolls…" Alice muttered, her hands idly gesturing by reflex as she spoke, her gaze began to wander to the flowers again, her feet pacing as her thoughts raced and connected various dots all at once. "...I should have seen it sooner!"

"Maybe help me see it too." Yuuka stepped back in front of Alice's field of vision, feeling left out of whatever conclusions the other has apparently reached. "You know why this all happened then, how Miss Eternity accomplished all this?"

"...It wasn't her. I mean, not entirely." Alice paused, fidgeting at her hair for a moment. "It was me, sort of. Or rather, this entire 'doll garden' project as a whole is responsible."

"You're saying your dolls are responsible? How?"

"You know how I control my dolls' movements, right? My thoughts and will are imparted on them, either through strings or through the air. Those thoughts extend to the dolls so they act according to how I want. The spell I've been using on the gardeners to 'act independently' is the same thing. They act on my own desires, then that repeats itself in a loop so they can keep going without my input. ...But then it got influenced by an outside force, this case being that fairy."

"Are we sure we're talking about Eternity Larva here? I didn't think she knew anything about puppeteering."

"She didn't have to. It's all in her scales, from her wings. They're a part of her, and they carry her essence. That essence spread to the dolls, and slowly overwrote my own will in the dolls with her own instead. Those scales aren't just physical pieces of her wings, they're a magical manifestation of her life essence, and as my dolls worked on the fields, a lot of those scales must have fallen over the soil and spread to the flowers' roots too."

Yuuka contemplated this information, crossing her arms as she spoke. "There's a few things I don't quite grasp. Miss Eternity plays in the garden with other fairies all the time, and she shoots off her scales often while playing too. Yet, nothing like this has ever happened before."

"That's right, even if she just went shooting her scales everywhere on her own, this wouldn't have happened. It was because of my command spell for the gardeners… I instructed the dolls to work day and night under _my_ influence, and they continued that even when that changed to being _her_ influence affecting them."

"So they kept taking care of the flowers. Which I still appreciate by the way, but what was the problem?"

"Imagine you were a fairy, or any normal youkai-" Alice began to explain.

"Are you implying I'm not normal?" Yuuka said in an exaggeratedly accusing tone.

"Not in the mood!"

"Sorry, sorry, please continue." Yuuka apologised, though her face didn't carry a hint of regret.

"...Anyway, so imagine you're just any regular fairy, and then there was suddenly a dozen or so 'people' who were only thinking of you, wanting the same things as you, who worked diligently every day without stopping, all for your sake."

"...Oh." Yuuka's eyes lit up in realisation. "Your dolls became Miss Eternity's worshippers."

"Exactly. Personal, automated worshippers whose every thought at every moment is about Larva. Their actions of planting seeds and nurturing flowers became 'rituals' for the fairy too. A never-ending source of faith for her."

"...Pfft. " After a brief moment of quiet contemplation over these facts, Yuuka snickered. A moment later, it turned into a series of soft chuckling.

"Are you… laughing?" Alice just stared dumbfounded at Yuuka.

"Sorry, it's just…" Yuuka started, her voice slightly shaky as if she wasn't done laughing. "So you _accidentally_ gave her a cult. A cult that worships her twenty-four hours a day without ever stopping. A fairy with that much faith behind her can't be much different from a god at that point."

"Yes, that's exactly it… Normally, I wouldn't think a simple creature made of magic like a fairy could contain that kind of power, but that Eternity Larva is either really special, or really lucky. The nature of her scales and the exact make-up of how my dolls operate happened to synthesise perfectly... I assume her nature as an insect fairy is what let her influenced the flowers too."

"It seemed more to me rather than the flowers being 'under' her influence, it's more as if the flowers all share her thoughts and emotions, and they feed into each other. So now, both the flowers and Miss Eternity allow each other to be in a perpetual state of excitement."

"So then, the dolls won't ever get tired, and the flowers and that fairy prevent each other from ever calming down, so…"

"It really is like an 'everlasting party' all centered around her. You couldn't get her a better gift on purpose. Well, until the flowers inevitably destroy themselves from all that excess energy."

"You seem really nonchalant about all this? I thought you were worried about the flowers' health."

"Of course I am!" Yuuka retorted, sounding actually offended at the implication that she had stopped caring. "...But you have to admit, it is a little amusing when you think about how all this happened as a whole."

"...How?" Alice was so far failing to see any amusement in anything that's happened here.

"See it this way. What started as a few dolls planting seeds, then through a series of coincidences, spiraled into a berserk field of giant flowers, and with one unassuming fairy in the middle of it all. A perfect example of how nature can be unpredictable sometimes."

"You're calling all this 'nature'? Nothing about this is natural in any way."

"Then maybe it's better phrased as fate being fickle?"

"...I guess so. Fate definitely went a roundabout way of screwing me over." Alice threw up her hands. She spoke bitterly, more towards the 'forest' around her than to anyone in particular. "If I'm going to fail, at least it's an absolute spectacle."

"Okay, so maybe it isn't that amusing." Yuuka shrugged. "Now that the cause of all this is clear, what's the solution?"

"...I don't know." Alice tiredly stated, before walking to the nearest large stone and taking a seat on it. She let out a heavy sigh, before letting her shoulders slump.

"Okay, it _is_ a tricky situation. You must have some idea of where to start at least?"

"I might, but… I don't know if it matters." Alice whined, and slumped even lower. "This has all long since fallen out of my control. This project has reached complete failure and it now has me trapped like an animal in a cage for good measure!"

Yuuka stared impassively at Alice for a moment. "...Not a 'mouse in a maze'?"

"Shut up." Alice said bluntly, before lowering her head.

"...You're not just going to just sit there and be sad all day, are you?"

"Maybe? If you don't mind…" Alice said without looking up at Yuuka. "The last several months of my work have blown up in my face in the most spectacular fashion possible. So yes, I would like to just be sad for a while!"

Several moments passed in silence. Alice wanted to do nothing more at the moment than ruminate and stew in her feelings. If she wasn't currently trapped in a garden full of berserk flowers, she'd retreat to her workshop to be wallow sadly in isolation, but she didn't rightly care if Yuuka saw her like this.

As she thought of Yuuka though, Alice realised she needed to say something. "...I'm sorry, Yuuka."

"Hm?" Yuuka hadn't moved from her spot, having been unsure what exactly to say or do next in the meantime. "It's fine, I understand you're frustrated and feeling a bit snippy-"

"No, I mean…" Alice raised her head, meeting Yuuka with a remorseful expression. "I'm sorry about the garden. I promised you I would help bring it back to good health, but I think I might have just killed every single flower with my botched experiment."

Yuuka blinked at Alice in surprise for a moment, before giving a gentle smile. She spoke in a somber tone of her own. "It's like I said, nature can be unpredictable. You can hardly be blamed for so many factors just happening to line up so poorly. I don't blame you any more than I do Miss Eternity. It was all just… bad luck."

"Seriously? You're not even a little mad at me?"

"What, do you want me to be?"

"Maybe? I'm not sure." As appreciative as Alice was of Yuuka's understanding, a part of her was hoping for someone else to validate her feeling that she's been wasting her time.

"Well, sorry to disappoint you, but I'm honestly still grateful to you."

"Huh?" Alice had to take a moment to make sure she heard that right. "Grateful? ...Oh, you're going to say you're 'grateful' for proving that you can't trust my wild ideas, right?"

"If I make fun of you, it's going to be more clever than that."

Yuuka then walked over to Alice, and seated herself next to her. There wasn't a lot of room on the small rock, so Alice had to scoot over until she was sitting on the edge. Now that they were sharing the rock, Alice glanced at Yuuka, curious and expectant.

After getting herself comfortable and sitting herself straight, Yuuka glanced to Alice in turn as she spoke."I didn't have any more hope for this garden at first you know? I had accepted that it would slowly come to an end, and I was content to leave it at that."

"You do seem like you're always content, like you never have a care in the world, and always just roll with whatever punches the world throws at you."

"It comes with living as long as I have."

"I must still be growing, then." Alice said with a derisive laugh.

"Yes, well… When you brought up your idea of cultivating the flowers with your dolls, I realised I didn't need to just let it be after all. It made me happy, hopeful, excited even. I think I understand you magicians and why you enjoy building and working towards all sorts of goals. Maybe I even envy you now, how you're always striving for more."

"Huh." As Alice listened, her features cracked into their own small smile. "Funny, I was thinking the same about you at some point."

"Hm? Do you mean... you were envying me?"

"Exactly. Sometimes I feel like I'm never satisfied with anything for very long. I wish I could, for just a moment, not have any care in the world, and be content and happy with what I've done."

"I don't think there's anything stopping you."

That elicited a scoff from Alice. "You don't know how my mind works. It's always going to be about how I can improve myself next, or what kind of breakthrough or achievement I have to aim for next."

As Alice said that, she thought about where her mind has been ever since she started this experiment with her dolls and the garden, the kind of thoughts she's had and moods she's been in. She realised something on the spot, which she then voiced.

"...Although. Just having something to work on, and getting to see all the beautiful sunflowers so often… It felt good. It was fun, even when I wasn't thinking about results or productivity. I have you to thank for that, turns out gardening is a pretty soothing activity when you know what you're doing."

Yuuka beamed at Alice in response. "You're welcome. I'm always happy to help someone take an interest in flowers. There just aren't many green-thumbs like us, you know?"

"I don't think I deserve to be called a 'green-thumb' after this disaster!" Despite saying that, Alice did find herself laughing at that comment.

Alice looked up at the skies, or what she could make out past the numerous tall flowers. She let herself take a deep breath and bask in the fresh air.

"...I don't regret it. Starting this whole project to begin with, that is. I want to believe it was all still worthwhile."

"I could have told you it was worthwhile." That fact wasn't even up to question in Yuuka's mind. "...But be honest with me, do you really not have even the slightest plan to solve our problem? I thought I heard that you were more suited to being up and about, looking for a way to resolve things, and that you couldn't relax otherwise."

"Whoever told you that was lying through her teeth." There was a pause, as Alice stirred in her thoughts for just a moment. "...But I was thinking-"

"There we go! I knew you were still wracking that brain of yours." Yuuka said cheerfully, patting Alice on the shoulder.

"I haven't even said anything!" Alice pushed away Yuuka's hand, embarrassed. "It's just an idea. Barely the beginnings of a stray idea."

"Well, I want to hear all about it. Especially since you're not writing these down anymore in that notebook" Yuuka continued to prod at Alice's shoulder, prompting the other to stand up and take a few steps away, partly so Alice could hide the wry smile on her own face.

"Okay, okay…" Once Alice managed to push down her smile to something more subtle, she turned to face Yuuka. "Just about everything in this idea has a 'maybe' in front of every step, but I think I can use what little resources we have on hand, to concoct some kind of remedy for the issues. A literal remedy, in a bottle."

"Like a magic potion to solve all our problems? You really are sounding like a magician now."

"That's because I _am_ one, and it falls on me to clean up this mess I helped made." Alice took a moment to stretch her limbs. Despite still being sore and covered in dirt, she was feeling more hopeful than she had been all day.


	7. Chapter 7

"...Are you sure you're encouraging it enough? What exactly are you 'telling' it?"

"You wouldn't rush a dish needing to be cooked, would you? Don't worry, I'm doing exactly what I always do to encourage growth."

Alice and Yuuka were currently kneeling low to the ground across from each other, a small transparent bottle between them. Yuuka hovered a hand over the bottle, focusing on its contents. Or at least Yuuka claimed to be focusing, even if Alice thought she was just staring at the bottle with a bored expression.

Brewing potions wasn't an activity Alice dabbled in often during her magical studies, and this one was a particularly haphazardly-made one. Carefully picking apart the right glittering samples she had collected from the wrongs ones into a separate bottle, adding a seed that had gotten stuck in her hair after a flower smacked her on the head, stuffing a torn up napkin as the closest thing to an absorber, using a lock of her hair for a magical conductor and then performing a delicate water spell in just the right way to mix it… It was as antiquated a process as it could have been.

The final step would have been to use some special reagents and tools from her house to get the ingredients to react a certain way, but being trapped in the garden meant Alice had to improvise, and she fortunately had someone on hand who had the ability to influence plant matter.

Although Yuuka had cautioned that she's never tried her ability on something as quaint as a seed in a bottle of odd chemicals, and didn't know what would come of it, but she had no qualms about giving it a shot.

After another minute of anxious waiting, the contents of the bottle started to stir and react.

"Oh!" Alice nearly jumped at the small sign of something finally happening. "It's working! Everything's coming together…"

"You don't have to sound so surprised, you know?" Yuuka smirked. "...Although I have to admit, I wasn't sure what to expect either."

Alice meanwhile, let out a proud laugh as she smiled at the bottle. "Hah! Only a true expert in magic could create a concoction with nothing but scraps in the outdoors."

"With some help, don't forget. How much more do you think it needs to 'grow'?" Yuuka asked, still imparting her power over the ingredients in the bottle.

"Hmm, I think it might be okay already? Might not hurt to keep at it for a little longer. ...Wait." Alice then noticed the small bottle was now convulsing. "Uh…"

"Um…" Yuuka pulled her hand back. "Is it suppose to do that?"

"It's probably just a stronger reaction than I expected-" Just as Alice had reached forward to steady the bottle with her hands, a loud bursting sound emitted from it, and the force of it nearly made the bottle fall out of her hands.

Alice had only blinked, but now there was a small sunflower that had sprouted and sitting at the rim of the bottle. Yuuka stared at the flower with an uncertain look. "That was maybe a bit too long after all."

"Well…" Alice spoke uneasily, holding up the bottle so she could check the contents on the underside. "I think this will still work, even if it has a flower growing in it."

"It looks like the beginning of a makeshift bouquet, you even prepared it in a vase. I could see you lining the rim with a few others underneath the sunflower, maybe a few tulips."

"It's a rather lousy vase then. I don't think there would be enough room to- Wait, that's not the point!"

Alice stood up, holding the potion that just happened to have a sunflower for a lid, and delicately held it higher as if it was some kind of treasure.

"This might be… No, I'm certain this will be the key to ending this nightmare! Now we just need to…" Alice stopped herself, her eyes then tentatively glancing to her left and right.

"What is it? Isn't the next thing to do is just to take that potion and-"

"Shh!" Alice quickly hushed Yuuka, before speaking in a lowered voice. "I don't think I should say anything aloud. There's a chance the flowers might hear it, and what if that information spreads to her?"

"I see. ...You know, some people have told me before how I sound unusual for talking about how I hear things that the flowers say. I was thinking that just now you sounded like you've lost your marbles."

"You are literally the last person with any right to say that." Alice said, rolling her eyes.

"Anyway, I understand you'll want to keep it a surprise for Miss Eternity. You wouldn't want to spoil the nice gift you got for Miss Eternity, right?" Yuuka said with a knowing smile, gently prodding her elbow against Alice. "Because that's what you have in that bottle, right? Just a nice, completely innocuous gift?"

"Okay, you're laying it on a bit thick." Alice said, pushing Yuuka's arm away. "But yes, now I just have to get close to her, and… 'give' her this."

Alice looked down at the bottle in her hands. There wasn't really much of a plan at this point, other than just getting close to Larva and applying the potion at an opportune time. She didn't want to admit that she was nervous at the thought of confronting a butterfly fairy of all things, but there was nothing to but get on it with it.

"Time to pay her another visit."

* * *

Alice and Yuuka walked to their destination, the gigantic sunflower in the middle of the garden, which turned out to be surprisingly easy to find again, as it only took them a few minutes of walking to come across it once more. Alice wondered if it was because the garden itself allowed them to approach its center.

"Alright. ...Are you ready?" Alice fingers were twiddling against the potion in her hand, the flower making it too cumbersome to put in any pocket, so she had to hold it in her hands the whole time.

"We're just going to talk to her, aren't we? What are you looking so worried about?" Yuuka replied with her usual nonchalance.

"Just the fact that she has literally an entire field of prehensile and regenerating flowers at her command." Alice stretched her necked, and took a few breaths to psyche herself up. "Okay, no more hesitating. I'm going to greet her."

Alice took a few steps forward, and looked up towards the tower-sized flower. She briefly scanned the skies beyond and her immediate surroundings.

"I don't see her. I thought she'd be flying around here. Could she be resting somewhere?"

"The flowers are still restless, so she must be too. Let me try something." Yuuka took a step forward, and directed her voice up towards the giant sunflower. "Miss Eternity! Are you there? Somebody here wants to see you badly!"

A second or two passed, where it seemed like there was no response, before a loud rumbling could be heard, followed by the sounds of many rustling leaves. The giant sunflower before them looked moved again in an unnatural fashion. It's tree-thick stalk bent and lowered, and the flowerhead actually slanted towards Alice and Yuuka as if it was…

"...Is the flower asking us to get on it's petals?" Alice asked, just a little bewildered.

"At least it means we're welcomed?" Yuuka shrugged her hands.

"This is so obviously a bad idea." Alice stated, but as hesitant as she was, she simply groaned to herself and approached the large petals.

Alice stepped on, and very tentatively walked a few more steps forward. Yuuka did the same, taking delicate steps, though that was because she didn't want to apply too much force on the flower itself.

"Oh, you two again!" A voice called out from ahead of them. It was Eternity Larva, who was flying over to greet them. "I heard someone was looking for me?"

"Larva… We've been looking for-" Alice was cut off when she felt the 'ground' below her feet move. "Aah…?!"

The giant flowerhead they were all on proceeded to lift itself back up in the air as the stalk straightened itself out. The flowerhead and petals at least lined itself mostly horizontal so they could all continue to stand on it.

Alice looked around, nothing but clear air on all sides with the rest of the garden beneath them. The clouds weren't that much higher above them. It occurred to Alice that if she were to fly off from here and kept her altitude, she probably would be able to escape the flowers all together and head straight home.

...But she had already resolved herself to fixing this problem, and wasn't about to turn away from that. Alice walked further in, stepping onto the disk florets which were high enough to tickle her legs, and greeted Larva in turn.

"Hi! It's uh, nice to see you." Alice had not planned in advance what to say, but she didn't expect the fairy's intelligence to have increased much if at all since they last met. "I hope you're doing… well?"

Alice hadn't noticed until she got closer, but Larva's wings were distinctly larger than before, and between the intense glittering effect they gave off, Alice could almost see what looked like cracks at the edges of her wings. Perhaps the fairy wasn't quite able to handle all that 'automated faith' after all. Though Larva herself appeared as chipper as ever.

"I felt a little bad about how our last meeting went."

"How did that went again?" Larva asked. "You know, it feels like that was both a long time ago, but also like it just happened."

"It wasn't either of those?" At least, Alice hoped she hadn't severely lost track of time while navigating the garden.

"Hasn't it? It felt like a daydream. I actually have a lot of daydreams and Miss Kazami show up pretty frequently in them too. I see you watching the flowers, or playing rough with them. It makes me nostalgic for some reason."

Alice felt like she should be embarrassed if Larva somehow 'saw' her getting repeatedly outmaneuvered by plants, but she tried to put it out of her mind. "Well, you've been on my mind a lot too."

"I think about you too." Larva said, turning to Yuuka. "Hope you don't feel bad about my friends winning our duel for me last time."

"Not at all." Yuuka gave a reassuring wave of her hand. "You've surrounded yourself with quite the fearsome entourage. Though I wonder why you're all the way up here instead of playing with any of your friends below."

"Oh, I'm with my friends right now! I just felt like being closer to the clouds, and so did they. Come and join the rest of us."

Larva turned around and flew deeper towards the flowerhead's center, prompting the others to follow. Yuuka spoke. "The rest of you? You mean those dolls, right?"

"Yeah, we were all just relaxing together.." Closer to the center of the sunflower they were standing on, Alice was able to see her dolls hovering nearby. Some of them were hovering in place, others were circling each other in that same 'dance' she saw before.

"There they are…" Alice fought down the sudden intensity building in her chest. As eager as she was to reclaim her dolls, she would have to bide her time for now.

"Don't feel too bad if they don't feel like playing with you, by the way. I think they're picky and only like me. They wouldn't pay much attention to my other friends."

Alice further fought the urge to wring Larva's neck at that moment, and spoke through gritted teeth. "I'll keep that in mind."

"Hey, isn't that…" Yuuka pointed a little further ahead. "...those other fairies?"

"Huh?" Alice squinted ahead of her. She wasn't sure what Yuuka was referring to until she noticed something barely sticking out from the 'ground'. "W-What the…?"

Along the disc-florets they were stepping on, Alice could barely see Sunny Milk, Luna Child, and Star Sapphire, their bodies almost entirely submerged into the surface of the flowerhead. They all had disoriented, half-conscious expressions on their face, and when Alice took some steps closer, she could hear each of them saying something in hushed tones.

"Fun… party… Party…" The fairies in the back continued to mutter every now and then, as if Alice didn't find this disturbing enough.

"What happened to them...?" Alice finally asked after several seconds of staring, morbidly curious about the horror show of a display happening in front of her.

"Well, they were playing rough with the flowers too, like you all were." Larva casually explained. "After they lost, my friends brought them here to hang out, though they haven't done anything other than lie there. Talk about lazy!"

"You know, I was just thinking..." Yuuka spoke, looking bemused at the fairies. "I haven't seen any other fairies around the field lately, even though I thought they would be extremely curious about all the sunflowers' sudden new height. Now I see what happened to the ones who were already inside."

"I think I know what's going on." Alice began to explain her hypothesis. "The magic that's linking all the dolls and flowers, it's trying to spread to those fairies too. They have too much will of their own to be completely taken over. ...but they're still fairies, creatures purely made of magic, so they were also susceptible enough to be affected like that."

"Uh…" Larva just tilted her head at all that. "What does that all mean?"

"They're…" A part of Alice wanted to say how she preferred those three fairies like this, but decided against it. "...just lazy, yeah."

"Hah, that's what I thought." Larva laughed, already putting the matter out of her mind as he continued to speak. "I hope you'll make for more interesting company."

"Right, that's why I'm here. To provide company…" Alice looked down at the potion-flower-bottle in her hand.

"...Say, what is that anyway? It looks like a really sorry vase to keep a flower in."

"Uh, this is…" Alice found herself struggling with her words. Larva was right next to her, but she wasn't sure how to proceed. Just handing the bottle over to Larva would help nobody, but did she dare to try catching her by surprise right then and there with it, even with Yuuka's help?

"Alice?" Yuuka asked from Alice's other side, noticing her quiet hesitation. "There was something on your mind you wanted to share with Miss Eternity, right?"

"Right, right." Alice turned to face Larva. A fairy was still a fairy, and they weren't very difficult to deceive. If Larva asked her, Alice would just claim she wanted the fairy to try out this new shampoo of hers or something. "This isn't a vase, it's something I wanted to show you."

"Oh, you got a flower for me?" Larva grinned at the thought of receiving a present. "...I don't want to sound ungrateful, but there's flowers like that everywhere here. I like the homemade look of the bottle though, it suits you very much."

"Thank you?" Alice couldn't help but feel offended. If she made something at home, it would have looked much nicer than this. "It's a special gift though, and what I'd like for you to do is…"

As Alice spoke, she thought she heard an odd sound in the distance, like some kind of firework going off. It was brief enough that she was about to ignore it, but then a second, even louder noise was distracting enough to get her attention.

"What is that…?" Alice turned her head, and immediately noticed faint trails of smoke drifting from below.

"Are the flowers experiencing another violent overgrowth?" Yuuka mused aloud in concern, and she started walking to the edge of the giant flowerhead to get a better look.

However, it was Larva had the most intense reaction of them all, gasping in shock. "Aah! It's big trouble! My friends are in a panic!"

"Really? I can't even tell what they're saying anymore." Yuuka admitted, to her own annoyance. "What do you mean by-"

"Aaah!" Larva didn't stick around to hear Yuuka's question, as she quickly flew off and headed to the fields below. All the dolls were quick to follow and also flew after her.

"Hey, wait!" Alice called out to Larva, but she was already long gone. Left by themselves, Alice stomped her foot down in frustration. "What's going on!? I was finally going to… Ugh! There's always something!"

"Come on, the day is far from over." Yuuka was considerably more calm than Alice. "You said something about rolling with whatever punches the world throws at you, right?"

"I said that's how you handle things, not me." Alice let out a tired sigh. "Okay, okay, you're right. Might as well see what's going on."

Alice and Yuuka flew off the edge off the giant sunflower and headed down to the garden's ground as well where Larva was. They didn't see anything strange right away, but that changed a second later.

A thick wall of sunflowers nearby was blasted apart, and a familiar voice rang out from where the plants used to be. "There you all are!"

"Marisa?!" Alice gaped in shock at the ordinary magician flying in, and she wasn't alone either.

Appearing shortly after from behind Marisa were two more people, the first being Narumi. "Alice! What on Earth is going on?! We've been getting pelted by violent sunflowers the whole time!"

The other person who appeared was Medicine, looking around irritatedly. "I don't like being kept from seeing my fellow dolls."

Larva only appeared slightly surprised at this, and the dolls circling her reflected that same surprise by clutching their lances and squirming in place. "So you bunch are the reason why the flowers are scared! That's playing way too rough!"

"Rough-housing is my speciality." Marisa responded without missing a beat. Her attention was then focused on the gigantic sunflower in the middle of the field. "Oooh, I'm willing to bet that's the source of all these magic flowers!"

"It _does_ look awfully important." Narumu added, eyes wide in awe as she tilted her head back to take in the full height of the gigantic sunflower. "It definitely feels like the big one in charge of all the little flowers."

"Which is why I'm going to blow it up." Marisa announced proudly.

Alice shook off the lingering shock of the three's sudden appearance and quickly spoke up. "All of you, slow down a moment!"

"Hey, Alice." Marisa said, taking note of the disarray Alice's clothes was in. "Have you been here all day? You've been trying to find the cause behind the flowers growing crazy too, right?"

"Uh, well…" Alice trailed off, her eyes glancing over to Larva, unsure how much she could or should say about her intentions at this point.

"Well you don't have to worry, because I'm going to wrap up this miniature incident right now!"

Alice shook her head. "No, no, hold it Marisa, I was in the middle of-"

Stop right there!" Larva called out angrily, her wings fluttering just a little more intensely as her back tensed. "I really hope you're not serious about 'blowing up' my big friend here!"

"That big flower is obviously some kind of youkai plant! You need to find better friends." Marisa then flew upwards, higher towards the giant sunflower. Before she gets very far though, she is stopped by four dolls who fly in front of her. Marisa stops in mid-air right before getting punctured with tiny lances. "Huh? Alice...?"

Marisa looked back down to see Alice, waving her arms for Marisa to stop. "It's not me! Marisa, listen for a second-"

At that same time, Larva also flew up to the same level as Marisa, more dolls flanking the fairy on each side. "The rest of us aren't going to just sit by and let you do that!"

"How in the world did you snatch Alice's dolls? ….Well, whatever. The lot of you are hardly going to be enough to- Woah!" Marisa suddenly ducked, avoiding the extending and prehensile sunflowers nearby now swinging at her and her broom, before readying her mini-hakkero. "You too!? Back off! I'm not afraid to do more weeding!"

"More of this?!" Narumi exclaimed in disbelief, as she flew upwards too, ready to deal with her fight against violent plants.

"I trust a fairy to take care of dolls even less than humans!" Medicine shouted before taking flight as well, weaving through incoming sunflowers trying to attack her, and charging straight for Larva.

"What is that supposed to mean!? I'm a great friend to them- Ah!" Larva quickly turned around and dashed through the air as Medicine gave chase, shouting back as she readied to send attacks behind. "That doesn't I can't be mean when I want to!"

"Wait, wait! All of you just... Forget it." Alice quickly gave up, slumping her head forward.

Within seconds, complete chaos had broken out in the skies. Marisa and Narumi were fending off incoming sunflowers while trying to get closer to the giant sunflower. Larva and Medicine were dashing through the air, chasing one another. All the while, the territorial dolls were contributing and getting in the way of everyone else either by swinging their lances or firing projectiles.

"...How many times is fate going to 'surprise' me this week?" Alice asked aloud to nobody in particular, unsure whether she wanted to cry or laugh.

Yuuka stepped beside Alice and gave her a half-hearted pat on the shoulder. "There, there, I know you were probably excited to enact that plan of ours, but-"

"I know, I know. You're going to say I should just roll with the punches. I haven't forgotten."

"That's good. ...But I was actually about to say I don't think your acting just now was up to snuff. Now if you'll excuse me, I believe I'll be joining in on the fun up there."

Yuuka took to the air, none of the flowers or dolls paying her any mind at the moment. She spotted Marisa, who had just shot down another doll and incoming leaf.

Before Marias moved much further ahead, Yuuka flew in front of her, cutting her off. "Slow down there, Marisa. No matter how altered these flowers are, that doesn't mean you should go burning down every plant on sight. I know you probably have some destructive urges to work through, but that's no reason to vent like this."

"Yuuka… The garden going crazy, that monstrously big sunflower, I'm wager you had something to do with all of it! Am I right?" Marisa pointed dramatically at Yuuka, who just smiled at that.

"Accusing me of being the culprit? I suppose I would be the first suspect." Yuuka had meant to simply explain the situation clearly, but she couldn't resist having a little fun. "What would you do if I said I did have something to do with it?"

"Oh, I think you already know!" Marisa exclaimed cheerfully.

"Oh my gosh." Hearing this conversation from below had Alice dropping her face into her hands before she exclaimed loudly to Yuuka. "You are seriously doing this now!?"

Nobody in the air acknowledged Alice. Yuuka and Marisa simply traded sly smiles and familiar lines. Marisa shot high into the air, gathering star-shaped energy in one hand. Meanwhile, Yuuka slowly drifted upwards, her parasoul resting over her shoulder.

Alice continued watching the ruckus for another few seconds or so, before letting out her second heaviest sigh that day. Rather than feeling saddened or discouraged however, she'd choose to be annoyed.

"...As usual, I need to take a hands-on approach after all." The magician declared to herself, deciding that she had to be the one to personally instil a bit of order into things, before flying up and into the thick of the commotion. She held the potion bottle close to her chest with both hands, doing her best not to spill it.

She came upon Narumi, who was shielding herself from incoming flowerheads by using her large bullet, but still took the time to speak to Alice when she approached. "Alice, have you been doing alright? You look like a mess, to be perfectly honest."

"I might have run into some issues." Alice spoke as she hid behind the same cover as Narumi. "Or rather, I've been running into issues all day."

"I know you were really invested in the garden, I'm sorry it turned out like this."

"Don't feel sorry for me yet! I'm here to fix all of this, so I'd rather you wish me luck." Alice gave a confident smile before continuing onwards.

"Then best of luck to you! I'm sure you'll bring salvation to this garden!" Narumi waved off Alice before she directed her attention back to fighting off the garden itself.

Alice weaved through more projectiles from all parties and wildly swinging plants, until she was right above where Marisa and Yuuka were, each taking a brief pause in their clash as they turned towards Alice.

"Hey, down here!" Marisa waved cheerily to Alice. "Are you here to give me a hand? We can double-team, magician-style on the culprit here."

"No, thank you." Alice said, while rolling her eyes at both of them. "You two have your fun while I go and actually solve this problem."

Alice continued on, and Marisa let out a lighthearted sigh at the puppeteer's uptightness. Though Yuuka was chuckling quietly as she watched Alice take off, and spoke softly to herself.

"You really are more suited to being up and abou- Uh oh." Yuuka's thoughts diverted when she saw Marisa's incoming star-shaped projectiles, narrowly grazing them before happily going back to engaging the black-and-white magician.

Alice finally caught up with Medicine and Larva, who were throwing projectiles at each other over a long-distance while circling the gigantic sunflower. Larva was further backed up by the gardener dolls, who were performing several of their built-in battle formations, which annoyed Alice to see.

Medicine didn't have any qualms about fighting against the dolls she was trying to save, even releasing her poisonous gases towards Larva, who moved further to avoid them. The dolls were caught in the poisonous smog's path, though Medicine didn't expect them to be affected.

However, Alice immediately noticed that when caught in the smog, the dolls not only slowed down, and even twitched in placed. It reminded her of how her dolls would fall inert when she directed them too far away from herself. This gave her an idea.

"Medicine!" Alice shouted after the other, trying to catch up with her.

"What!?" Medicine shouted back, though she didn't stop advancing through the air, grazing and dodging the incoming projectiles and attacking flowers.

"I need your- woah!" Alice quickly ducked under a barrage of bullets and then went over large leaf that nearly smacked into her. "I need your help!"

"I'm busy right now?!" Medicine shouted incredulously. "Why did you let a fairy of all people take your dolls? Have you seen how easily fairies break things?!"

"I don't like it either! But I…" Alice just barely side-stepped another wave of bullets, before catching up and flying beside Medicine. "But I can get them back with your help! I need you to hit the dolls with as high a concentration of your poison as possible!"

Medicine briefly ducked behind the giant sunflower's stalk for cover, using this respite to give Alice a confused quirk of the eyebrow. "Did I hear that right? You want me to poison..."

"The dolls!" Alice ducked behind the same spot, right below Medicine. "That should cleanse them of the fairy's influence, even if only for a little while."

"I don't understand how any of that works, but… I'll take your word for it."

Medicine moved out of her cover, and flew towards the dolls and Larva again, the fairy addressing her with a boast. "So you're ready for more, huh? I should warn you, I'm feeling the entirety of summer within me!"

"Unlike us dolls, the only thing within your body is poison. Now let me show you something even worse…" Medicine gathered her power, building it up within herself. She then released it all in the form of one, large bubble of concentrated disease.

The bubble went forward at a surprisingly fast speed, but Larva was more than far away enough to dodge. However, the bubble did pass through several of the dolls before dissipating.

Most of the dolls wobbled away just enough to return to Larva's side, but two of them fell completely inert, before falling towards the ground.

Alice immediately seized on her chance, diving towards those two dolls and connecting her spiritual strings to them in mid-air. In an instant, the dolls came to 'life', and took their rightful place by Alice's side.

"Yes! It's good to have you back on the force!" The familiar sensation of puppeteering dolls came back to her, and she pulled in the two dolls with her arms for a big hug. A second passed, and she quickly let go, looking around anxiously. "Nobody saw me do that, right?"

Alice looked back up to see that Medicine and Larva were still going at it. She might only have two dolls compared to Larva's dozen, but she knew better than anybody how to use them. It was finally time to enact a proper counterattack.

During their scuffle in the air, Larva had been mostly save from all of Medicine's attacks, the possessed gardener dolls providing plenty of distance and cover fire to give her the advantage. As she continued to put distance between her and Medicine, she almost didn't notice the line of rainbow-coloured projectiles appearing behind her.

"Huh?!" Larva stopped herself just in time before the line of bullets collided with her. The bullets were continuous, and even arced into a threatening curve.

Before Larva could back up very far, she noticed a second of these arcing lines of bullets appearing as well, which hit several of her dolls and knocked them aside. The two streams of projectiles were each being produced by the two dolls under Alice's control, who were now moving and firing in sync in order to corner the fairy in one place.

"Hey, what's the big deal?!" Larva looked more annoyed than concerned at this though. "Shouldn't it be against against common courtesy to switch sides without any warning?"

"This is a much more scaled down take on 'Little Legion' than I would have liked." Alice said with a smile, floating in the air above Larva. "But for using only two troops, I think it does the job pretty well."

"Huh?" Larva looked up in confusion, spotting Alice. "What are you doing?"

"I never got around to giving you that gift, remember?" Alice help up the bottle in one hand.

"Oh, that? This really isn't the time, to be honest. I'm in the middle of something right now, literally!"

"That's fine. This will only take a moment!" Alice floated closer to Larva's level. Realising the sunflower was in the way of actually accessing the contents of the bottle, Alice took hold of the flower and forcibly plucked it out in one motion, roots and all.

...As soon as she had done that though, this had the unexpected effect of the rest of the contents to start reacting violently, bubbling up near the rim, and the entire bottle began to shake in Alice's hand.

"Uh?" Alice's eyes widened at this, and a bright light like that of a hot flame, was emitting from the bottle, and getting bigger by the second. "...Aaaaah!"

In a panic, Alice abruptly threw the bottle at Larva, who gaped at the incoming glowing bottle in utter bewilderment. "What-"

...Before it blew up right in Larva's face, leaving a large, smoky explosion that completely engulfed everything around her.

From a distance, Medicine just shook her head. "You all really are obsessed with that, huh…"

* * *

"Uh, is she alright?" Marisa said as she stared down at Larva, who was lying front-first on the ground, the side of her face against the dirt.

The fairy's wings were charred, chipped and were without any of the luster or elegant form they had before. They twitched as Larva weakly muttered aloud with a dazed expression on her face. "My head… I just want to take a nap… for all of summer."

After Larva had fallen down, it wasn't long before everything else calmed down as well. The sunflowers stopped acting out, and the rest of Alice's dolls went inert, allowing her to collect them. Alice predicted that it probably wouldn't be long before all the flowers returned to normal size soon, a lot of them already looking a bit shorter than they did earlier.

The other fairies that were trapped within the giant sunflower had since gotten loose, or rather they had all fell out, their memory of the whole experience a bit of a blur. They had little on the mind other than knowing they had other places to be.

Sunny Milk and her friends did at least pass by to speak to Larva in her sorry state. "Hey, Larva, you tuckered out already? It feels like we haven't even done anything yet. Your party… was kind of lame. Well, we're going to play in the lake now."

They flew off soon afterwards, and everyone who remained were now looking curiously at the defeated fairy.

"Magic is scary." Medicine said, staring down at Larva with pity. "Even I wasn't looking to punish her that badly."

"It was… mostly an accident." Alice gave a half-hearted shrug. "I just didn't expect such a volatile reaction. I'm sure she'll be fine. ...What's more important is that everything should go back to normal now."

"So, then..." Marisa turned her narrowed eyes to Yuuka. "You weren't the culprit after all? You could have said something."

"I'm certain I never actually said I was responsible." Yuuka said, bringing her hand to her chest and pretending to be offended. "Don't try to act like you would have listened to me either way."

"In that case, you should have let me beat you quickly so I could get to the actual culprit." Marisa retorted.

As the two bantered, Narumi let out a relieved breath. "I'm just glad it all worked out. I was starting to worry that I would have to resort to my widespread life-canceling magic to calm the flowers down."

"That sounds really alarming! You would have warned the rest of us before doing that, right?" Alice asked, glancing nervously at Narumi.

"The point is that it all worked out." Narumi said with a bright smile, not answering the question.

"I guess there's no reason to stick around." Marisa dusted off her hands. "I'll consider this incident wrapped up."

"You say that as if you did anything to help." Alice scoffed.

"If Marisa is getting credit just for showing up, then I should too!" Narumi added, with a surprising amount of insistence.

Yuuka leered at the bunch of them. "The only thing you all should be credited with is the pointless chopping down of innocent flowers all day."

"Innocent?" Marisa retorted. "Those flowers were more vicious than...-"

"Ugh…" Larva groaned from below, covering her head with her hands. "Can you all please stop being so loud?! I have a really bad headache…"

Everyone stared at Larva for a moment, before Yuuka addressed the others, actually speaking in a slightly lower volume. "If the bunch of you want to be credited for something, the flowers technically haven't completely recovered past their initial decline. I know they'd appreciate it if you stopped by now and then to water them or bring mulch."

"What? You're asking us to do garden work out of the blue?" Marisa could only frown at such a suggestion. "No thanks."

"Yeah, that sounds like a lot of work, and time away from home. Sorry." Narumi said uncommitally.

"Don't you feel the least bit bad about cutting down the innocent flowers on your way to get here? It's not their fault they were under a terrible spell." Yuuka glanced aside with a mournful expression as she spoke somberly. "As if this garden hasn't fallen under enough tragedies..."

"Um…" Marisa and Narumi exchanged a look, each at least somewhat aware that Yuuka was just playing them.

"I'll help." Medicine spoke up. "This garden has been through a lot, and I want to see it get better."

Now that someone else had offered, Marisa realised refusing would only make look like an even bigger jerk. "I _guess_ I can plant a few seeds, to replace the ones I blew up."

"It couldn't hurt. I know a thing or two about preserving life, so count me in too." Narumi nodded, deciding she might as well lend a hand at this point.

Alice meanwhile, was smiling all throughout listening to this conversation. "Well, if the three of you are going to help, you can take pointers from me. I've been at this for a while, after all."

"Oh?" Yuuka turned to Alice, genuinely surprised. "You don't have to, you know? I was expecting you to be looking forward to take a break from all things relating to flowers after today."

"Hardly." Alice shook her head, smiling all the while. "I did agree to nurture the flowers until the next blooming season was over, didn't I? This far in, I might as well see that promise to the end. This recent hiccup is no reason to stop short."

She took a few steps forward, past everyone else. Feeling a renewed confidence, and even enthusiasm in herself, she considered how to resume her nurturing of the garden.

"I think the first thing I'll do is… is…" Alice realised then, that while her confidence was real, her 'enthusiasm' was actually just lingering adrenaline from the very long day, and it finally left her body at that moment. Her world started to spin, and she barely heard the voices shouting her name when she lost her balance and fell backwards…

...However, she never felt herself hitting the ground. Once her vision finally stopped spinning, she noticed three different faces all looking straight down at her.

"Geez, and you say I'm reckless…" Marisa chided, frowning at Alice after having shouted the loudest.

"Don't try to move too much! Oh, you're probably dehydrated too…!" Narumi's eyes were full of worry as her thoughts scrambled for ways to help.

Medicine was peeking her head over Narumi's shoulder, not quite sure if she should say anything, but appearing slightly concerned as well.

And the closest face was Yuuka, who had caught Alice in her arms right before she fell. She had been watching Alice intensely, but her expression shifted to a small, gentle smile. "I think I'm going to have to insist on that break.""

"P-Probably a good idea." Alice said with an embarrassed, but appreciative smile. "I think I'm going to nap all summer too."

"I'll wait until you wake up, then."

"...Thanks." Alice let out a relaxed sigh, and she could feel the strength starting to return to her legs. A small part of her almost wanted to take a nap right there and then in the other's arms. It was certainly comfortable enough.


	8. Chapter 8

Alice entered through the door of the modest flower store. There were a few villagers browsing the shelves, and the familiar florist was behind the counter as always, who waved in greeting at Alice when she approached. "Good morning, Miss Margatroid."

"Good morning. What's the selection looking like today?" Alice asked, stopping at the counter.

"It just so happens, we had some fresh new bags of chrysanthemum seeds come in yesterday. How do you think those would look in your house?"

"Hm, it might go well with these carnations I'm growing at home. No reason not to try!"

By now, Alice had a lively flower garden blooming behind her house, and she had multiple potted plants to freshen up the interior of her home as well. Gardening never stopped being a soothing activity in-between her other hobbies or social activities.

"I have to say..." The florist started making conversation while bringing the bag of seeds to the counter. "Your home must be looking a lot like this shop right about now, with how many different types of flowers you've ordered from me."

"No way. I'm still a fledgling gardener compared to someone like you."

"Don't sell yourself short. You're the one who fix up that big garden full of sunflowers, weren't you?"

"That was different." Alice brushed the comment off with a chuckle, though she honestly wouldn't claim she did that much for the Garden of the Sun in the long run either way.

During the last few weeks before the blooming season for sunflowers, various people took turns helping to take care of the garden in their own way. Alice used her dolls as always to accomplish many tasks at once, Marisa covered a lot of ground in a short time by riding on a broom, and Narumi made small-scale applications of her life magic. While Medicine liked to take things slow, she had a knack for creating effective pesticides.

Yuuka contributed in her own way, in-between simply admiring the flowers or bothering the people who were helping out.

Even Eternity Larva offered her assistance in helping the garden. Though the events of what happened were just a hazy, headache-inducing blur to her, she felt like she owed the flowers for making 'false promises' to them. That said, the most she really did to help was either trying to carry water from a river to the garden with her bare hands, but the effort was honestly appreciated by everyone.

Although the blooming season had passed, Alice still found the large field of sunflowers to be a worthwhile place to visit on occasion, which she regularly did so for the occasional stroll or picnic.

"That garden… just had the will to survive, is all."

"Fine, I'll stop saying you did anything." The florist gave a brief laugh as she placed the seeds into a shopping bag. "But I'm still going to be grateful all the same."

"Well, if you were really feeling appreciative... Maybe I could get a special discount on my purchases?"

"Not that grateful." The florist gave a bright smile as she handed Alice her bag.

"Had to try." Alice took the bag, and said her farewells to the florist before turning towards the exit.

As soon as Alice had walked outside, another familiar face was there to greet her. It was Yuuka, who gave her usual polite greeting. "Good morning. Somehow I'm always surprised to run into you here."

"Guess you must be lucky today." Alice said nonchalantly. She definitely noticed out of the corners of her eyes how every villager who started coming this way, immediately turned around upon spotting Yuuka. A part of her wondered how much this affected the florist's business...

Yuuka glanced down at the shopping bag in Alice's hand. "Might I ask what you have there?"

"Just some seeds I feel like planting. Chrysanthemum, to be specific."

"Ooh. I think those would go exceptionally well with your carnations. ...Ah, sorry, maybe you'd rather decide for yourself."

"No, I… appreciate the advice." Alice said, smiling a little more proudly to herself than she could help. "What are you doing here, by the way? At this store, I mean."

"I just came to hear about what selections are going around the village, and share some recent stories about flowers the lovely human inside the store."

"Stories, huh? I'm a little curious too. I mean, what even constitutes a story when you're talking about something as peaceful as flowers."

"I actually prefer sharing that kind of thing with one person at a time, and there's some context you'd be missing."

"Oh…" That admittedly just made Alice even more curious, but she wouldn't push it. "That's fine. I'll wish you a good day then-"

"Ah, but you know… I don't think I'll take too long inside the shop, and if I'm being honest, I'm interested in what exactly you'll do with those new seeds of yours."

"What, you're afraid I'll mess up with them?" Alice asked with a wry smile.

"I didn't say that, but I'm not quite yet confident to call you a fellow green thumb. I wouldn't mind accompanying you just in case something goes wrong."

"How generous of you." Alice resisted the urge to roll her eyes at Yuuka's ever-present knack for making aggravating comments. "...I'll start brewing tea when I get home. It should cool by the time you come over."

"Not too much sugar, please. See you later, then?"

"See you later." Alice and Yuuka walked past each other, the latter entering the flower shop as the magician made her way out of the village.

At the moment, Alice didn't really have any immediate plans regarding her magical studies, nor did she have any experiments in mind. She'd inevitably get back into the thick of all that alongside her fellow magicians eventually, but for now, that all could be left aside.

Alice was content to plant some flowers, enjoy the pleasant weather, and appreciate some occasionally irritating, yet always delightful company.


End file.
